Meeting the Participants
Steve, sixty-four, Essex
Profession: Retired underwriter
Political history: Usually Conservative, except when he resided in a left-leaning London borough and supported the Social Democratic Party
Amuse bouche: His specialty in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s not when you’re discussing evacuating people from the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the missile silos”
Eva, 25, the capital
Profession: Graduate in psychology
Voting record: In her home country, Aotearoa, she voted a combination of Labour and Green
Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea
Initial impressions
Eva: Steve appeared there to have a nice time, to be receptive
He: She seemed like a very intelligent, articulate, nice person
She: I had a caprese salad, mushroom pasta, and a creamy dessert thing, it was delicious
The big beef
She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that British people who are native to the area, not just white British, face limited access to the things that they need, because more and more people are arriving. However I just disagree that the figures are so problematic
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 governments have exploited immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are kept low, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – allocate additional funds on childcare, on schooling, on innovation
Eva: I am not deeply informed of Brexit, because I was 16 and abroad when it happened. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He told me about EU labor migrants – people could come here and receive solely the salary of the country they came from
He: Macron spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was revised in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was oil workers that were imported; later it’s been service industry, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than workers from other countries
Sharing plate
He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I value fresh atmosphere, I love the countryside. We agreed 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 build green infrastructure
Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. 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 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 water power
Dessert topics
She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to form opinions based on faith
He: I come from the eastern part of London. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been modernized. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People gaze at me because it’s become predominantly Islamic. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Eastern European roots – she objects to the term, to her it implies deprivation. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?
Eva: I believe that followers of Islam are really disproportionately shown in the media as doing things wrong. It seems a somewhat discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners
Takeaway
He: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop
She: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening
