🔗 Share this article

Introducing the Individuals

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Retired insurance professional

Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His focus in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing rescuing people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Profession: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a long time to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

She: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, mushroom pasta, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are entering. Whereas I just disagree that the numbers are so problematic

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that authorities have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on education, on innovation

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of Brexit, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin

Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; since then it’s been service industry, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

He: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after Ukraine started, they used that money to build eco-friendly systems

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s an unfavorable approach to go about things. He was in favour of continuing our own oil exploration for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Conclusion

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the station

Eva: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening