We are just like the immigrants...

By TOMMY HOLGATE

Hust good friends . . . I eagerly anticipate non-mudslinging political debate

Well, what a lovely week of official political business here in Chesterfield.

On Monday I attended the Chesterfield 2015 General Election Prospective Parliamentary Candidate briefing at the lovely Town Hall (above).

On the way there, an underweight, mid-afternoon cider-drinking, Rottweiler-walking couple began shouting 'nice hair mate/oi afroman' from across the road.

The reason I have overtly described them is that it paints the picture of the type of individual that is currently cast out by this society. I am not one to judge for I will have spent many afternoons [sometimes mornings] drinking cider in the street [or park, or on a bus/in a library if it were syphoned off into an apple juice bottle from the supermarket] between the ages of 16 and 26.

So I crossed the road and asked them how they were doing. In all honesty they looked a bit scared when the security of the two-lane barrier had been traversed, and didn't really know what to do.

I find it often diffuses a situation when one enquires as to the wellbeing of another.

"You up to much this afternoon," I further probed.

"Just trying to get a load of bull**** sorted," replied the lady of the pair.

The bovine-dung they were referring to was the sorting of benefits. We had found common ground on this matter as I had recently experienced the frustration of JobSeekers' Allowance. We then genuinely hit it off when I spotted that one of them had a K Cider (8.4 per cent) while the other was drinking White Storm (7.5 per cent) which led to a chat about 'pennies per unit of alcohol' and they were visibly impressed with the calculations I still have in mind from the frugal days of uni-boozing.

Be-cider-self . . .  girl drinks in the street [pic: Guardian.com]

When I explained I was running for Parliament, their response was - without missing a beat: "Please just do something about those f*****g immigrants. We can't get any jobs because they're here."

"You might want to vote for Ukip," I chuckled, in a way that will never be intended to demean the intentions of the purple party.

She said: "No, but they're all over here, I saw it on a program once, there were loads of them working in a chicken factory, and living illegally in a disused building in the middle of nowhere."

Luxury.

Then my tone turned into a political man trying to sound ordinary [although I am a working-class mining-town lad when all is said and done]. Like when Ed Cameron talk about 'meeting a dinner lady called Beverley' etc.

I said: "The thing is, that picture you painted doesn't sound like they are having a very good time. 

"I remember working on a fish farm in the uni summer holidays. I spent two months living with a pair of Polish blokes - Kristoff and Marius - whose life involved spending ten hours a day, six days a week, chopping heads off trout. Each night, they would get home and take it in turns to Skype their families for 15 minutes, before crashing out asleep.

Trout of order . . . the image we have been given of immigrants is, quite frankly, innacurate 

"They were basically putting themselves through hell - for UK minimum wage - so that their families could live a better life back home and their kids could afford school meals. They love their families, in the same way that you love your families. Us three are exactly the same as the immigrants in that sense.

"But what we would be looking to do is find ways of working with the - among others - Polish/Romanian communities in a way that might treat the problem at source and lessen the need for them to escape and leave their families. Thus, ultimately lowering levels of immigration."

The lady responded: "So you would be helping the issue?"

"I suppose so, but in a way that sees them as fellow people, as opposed to illegal and foreign," I said.

"Hmm," they both mused, possibly as though this were the first time they had encountered a proposition that wishes to deal with the situation in a way that sidesteps useless anger.

Because what is the point of having enemies when we are all - as humanity - surely working towards the same goal of achieving happiness and finding enjoyment in the giving and receiving of love?

I've heard people say: 

"You won't get a former-fish farmer elected for love nor money."

But maybe one day we could. With a little bit of either.

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