Dining across the divide: ‘I think certain people need to be locked up’

2 days ago 3

Ian, 60, Manchester

Occupation Retired, used to be an operations manager for medical tech

Voting record Always Labour

Amuse bouche Since he retired, Ian has done a little bit of film and TV extra work. He watched the episode of Riot Women he was supposed to be in: he could see it was him but nobody else could

Nina, 37, Cheadle

Occupation Tram driver

Voting record Always Labour, but from now on, it’s going to be Green. Or Lib Dem

Amuse bouche Worked as a prison officer in Styal women’s prison for seven years; left for a variety of reasons, one of them that the Just Stop Oil and Free Palestine protesters were starting to arrive as inmates, and she didn’t want to be part of their containment

For starters

Ian She was a little flustered because she’d been held up by an accident on the motorway, but she was really nice.

Nina He was like a nice, older guy, welcoming, friendly – put me at ease.

Ian I had crispy roast potatoes with a chilli mayonnaise, and a pumpkin risotto. And a Basque cheesecake for dessert, which was very indulgent.

Nina I had hispi cabbage, coley, sticky toffee pudding – it was amazing.

A man and woman facing each other across a restaurant table

The big beef

Ian I think certain people definitely need to be locked up. A few will probably be beyond rehabilitation and need to stay in for life. Nina had a lot of inside knowledge, pardon the pun. I thought she was anti-prison entirely, but she was very clear: she’s in favour of locking people up when they’re a danger to the public. But her thing was repeat low-level offenders.

Nina I don’t think prisons work; there aren’t enough staff, there’s not enough money, there’s no chance to rehabilitate people. The women are cut off from their families, their children. Their mental health was the main problem, which couldn’t be dealt with in prison, the staff weren’t trained to do it. Ian’s stance was that shoplifters needed punishment, but my argument was that they were coming in as part of a job. They go out to rob, they do 12-week sentences, they don’t have any sort of rehabilitation.

Ian What was interesting, which I didn’t know, is that there are people who do their stretch, go out, do something deliberately, get caught and then come back in, almost like drug mules, packed full of drugs to sell in the prison. That doesn’t serve society or those women.

Nina Where do you get the money from to fix all this? The public don’t care about prisoners, they don’t want to spend their tax money on them. The government will just put a sticking plaster on it and build more prisons. You’ve got the private sector as well, making money out of it – they’re worse than the HMP.

Sharing plate

Ian I’m no fan of Maduro. It’s been a brutal regime and he stole the election last year, but Trump’s actions basically mean the international order has gone. Especially if he goes ahead in Greenland as well. The fact is, nobody’s going to stop him, are they? He knows, and we all know, we’re not going to go to war with America over Greenland. It feels like the reason Trump wants to do it is to go down in history as the president who expanded the USA. And that goes with the narcissist he appears to be.

Nina I’d just come back from Barbados – it’s quite close to Venezuela, and there were loads of Americans there. It was quite bad vibes – three days when all the flights were cancelled because they didn’t know what to do about the airspace. All I knew when I got home was that Trump had captured the Venezuelan president. Ian was telling me there were allegations that Maduro was a cartel kind of guy, a bit of a dictator. That was interesting to hear.

For afters

Ian She mentioned the attack on the synagogue, which happened a couple of miles from where we live. The guy who did it lived 400 yards up our road. We’re not Jewish but a lot of our neighbours and friends are. There’s no doubt that antisemitism has increased.

Nina He was saying there’s a lot of friction around the Gaza issue where he lives. In my area, I’d noticed a lot of racism, Islamophobia, but never antisemitism. But it’s not a big Jewish area, where I am.