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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Typically Conservative, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” 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 the Korean peninsula because the North Koreans have opened the weapon systems”

Eva, twenty-five, the capital

Occupation: Graduate in psychology

Political history: In her native land, New Zealand, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was half a year, which is a long time to be on a boat

Initial impressions

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

Steve: She seemed like a very bright, well-spoken, pleasant person

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

Key disagreement

She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being reduced. He thinks that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, don’t have as much access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are entering. However I just don’t think the figures are that bad

He: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I believe that authorities have used immigration to occupy positions they can’t get people to do without increasing salaries. Wages are suppressed, so taxes have to be kept low, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on child support, on education, on technology

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a new light. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to do away with the scheme; it was reformed in two thousand eighteen. Before that, posted workers coming in were undermining local employees. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been service industry, 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

Steve: It would be great to have a different energy source, come off of oil. I disapprove of environmental harm, I value fresh atmosphere, I appreciate rural areas. We found consensus on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues skyrocketed after the conflict began, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems

Eva: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of continuing our own oil exploration for the small amount 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 moving towards environmentally friendly options, windfarms and water power

For afters

She: We briefly discussed Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about radical ideologies entering – he did note that a lot of the people in the Arab world were radical, which I felt was not fair. I think it’s prejudiced to form opinions based on religion

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to that district, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People stare 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 doesn’t like that word, to her it implies poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a somewhat discriminatory, or xenophobic

Conclusion

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

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