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Meeting the Individuals

Stephen, sixty-four, Essex

Profession: Former insurance professional

Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he resided in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the Social Democratic Party

Interesting fact: His specialty in underwriting was hostage situations: People often claim that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re planning evacuating 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 progressive parties

Interesting fact: Eva has been employed 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 seemed there to have a nice time, to be open

He: She seemed like a very bright, articulate, pleasant person

Eva: 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 reduced. He believes that UK residents who already live here, 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 figures are so problematic

Steve: I’m for skilled immigration, I have no desire to reside in a homogeneous, WASP country with tepid ale. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so taxes have to be minimized, so we are unable to improve services – allocate additional funds on child support, on education, on technology

She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, 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” – candidates 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, migrant laborers coming in were undercutting British workers. Under the former PM, it was oil workers that were brought in; later it’s been hospitality, agriculture. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a passenger vessel and said she was earning significantly higher than international colleagues

Common ground

Steve: It would be ideal to have a different energy source, 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 Norway?” Their oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to build green infrastructure

She: So we’re using their oil. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the limited quantity we’ll need in the coming years. 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 hydro

For afters

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we didn’t call it that. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did note that a many individuals in Middle Eastern countries were radical, which I didn’t think accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on religion

He: I hail 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: 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 had a little look at me about that. I used the word segregated area. 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 consented to substitute a different word – maybe community?

Eva: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the news outlets as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or prejudiced against foreigners

Takeaway

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

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