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Meeting the Participants

Steve, sixty-four, Essex

Occupation: Former underwriter

Political history: Typically Tory, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have opened the missile silos”

Eva, 25, the capital

Profession: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of progressive parties

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, 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 came across as a very intelligent, articulate, pleasant person

She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was very good

The big beef

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, including non-white white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the numbers are that bad

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are kept low, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology

She: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was sixteen and not living here when it occurred. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He told me about “posted workers” – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the their nation of origin

He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, farms. She understood that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was paid a lot more than workers from other countries

Sharing plate

Steve: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, 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 the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they allocated those funds 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 supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount we’ll need in the future. I kind of agree with him. We’re still going to rely on air travel. We both think we should be advancing to environmentally friendly options, turbine fields and water power

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed worried by radical ideologies entering – he did note that a many individuals in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

Steve: I hail from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Naturally, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word segregated area. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I consented to substitute a different word – maybe enclave?

She: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the media as engaging in misconduct. It seems a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

He: I think we parted on good terms. We had a hug at the train stop

She: We both said that we’d had a lovely time