Meeting the Participants
Steve, sixty-four, Canvey Island
Occupation: Retired underwriter
Political history: Usually Conservative, apart from when he lived in a left-leaning London borough and voted for the Social Democratic Party
Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was kidnap and ransom: “Everyone always says that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the DPRK have activated the weapon systems”
Eva, twenty-five, the capital
Profession: Graduate in psychology
Political history: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green
Interesting fact: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was six months, which is a significant duration to be at sea
Initial impressions
She: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be open
He: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person
Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious
Key disagreement
She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being curtailed. He believes that UK residents who already live here, including non-white Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad
He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without increasing salaries. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on technology
Eva: I am not deeply informed of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the wage of the country they came from
He: Macron spent 24 months getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Previously, posted workers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were imported; since then it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She understood that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries
Sharing plate
He: It would be great to have a alternative power, transition from fossil fuels. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I love the countryside. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of Norway?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to develop eco-friendly systems
She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to proceed. He was in favour of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll require in the future. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, windfarms and hydro
For afters
Eva: We touched on anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion
He: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she objects to the term, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?
Eva: I feel like followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat racist, or prejudiced against foreigners
Conclusion
He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the station
Eva: We both said that we’d had a lovely time
