Profession: Retired insurance professional
Voting record: Usually Tory, apart from when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and voted for the SDP
Amuse bouche: His specialty in insurance was hostage situations: “Everyone always says that insurance is boring, but it’s not when you’re discussing rescuing people from the Korean peninsula because the DPRK have activated the missile silos”
Profession: Psychology graduate
Voting record: In her native land, New Zealand, she voted a combination of progressive parties
Amuse bouche: Eva has worked as a singer on cruise ships; her longest trip was six months, which is a significant duration to be on a boat
Eva: Steve seemed focused on enjoying the meal, to be open
He: She came across as a very bright, well-spoken, nice person
Eva: I had a tomato and mozzarella dish, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was delicious
She: He was certainly on the side of immigration being curtailed. He thinks that British people who already live here, including non-white white British, face limited access to the essential services, because increasing numbers are arriving. However I just don’t think the figures are so problematic
He: I’m for skilled immigration, I don’t want to live in a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country with warm beer. But I believe that governments have used immigration to fill the jobs they can’t get people to do without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on technology
She: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was sixteen and abroad when it occurred. He clarified it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about EU labor migrants – candidates could come here and only be paid the salary of the their nation of origin
Steve: Macron spent two years getting the EU to do away with the system; it was reformed in 2018. Before that, migrant laborers coming in were undermining British workers. Under Gordon Brown, it was petroleum staff that were brought in; 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
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 oil and gas profits skyrocketed after Ukraine started, they allocated those funds to develop eco-friendly systems
She: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way 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 use planes. We both think we should be moving towards greener solutions, turbine fields and hydro
Eva: We briefly discussed anti-Muslim sentiment, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed concerned about extremism coming here – he did mention that a lot of the people in Middle Eastern countries were extremist, which I didn’t think fair. I think it’s discriminatory to make judgments based on religion
Steve: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: full of yuppies. But when I go down that local market, I look like a foreigner. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She gave a slight glance at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes their own.” I agreed to use a different word – maybe enclave?
Eva: I believe that Muslim people are really disproportionately shown in the news outlets as engaging in misconduct. It appears a little bit racist, or xenophobic
Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a embrace at the train stop
She: We both said that we’d had a lovely time
Film critic and industry analyst with a passion for uncovering cinematic trends and storytelling techniques.
