Baby boomers are already dreaming of escaping under the post-Covid sun | young people

TThe ‘wrong type’ of elderly or middle-aged people are expected to receive the Covid vaccine by the end of March. Not the really old people, the vulnerable shields, but the other lot – bringing us a total of 32m who are fifty and over. All those Baby Boomers / Generation Xers, rampaging in the streets and in the shops, waving their Covid-secured passes, maybe to book themselves a well-deserved YOLO vacation.

During this time, the younger generations can feel left behind in a number of ways. And there is the looming problem: the vaccine is the great liberator, but rather it depends on what you’re released into, especially if you don’t have the money or prospects. Could this give young people another reason to resent their elders for their perceived easier conduct?

There is a strong element of age to Covid and not just because a lot of older people are more likely to die. It is also about the socio-economics of the stages of life. This was evident early on when people started bragging about working from home on laptops in their backyards. All these rumors enough about yoga and the money saved on trains and coffee.

Meanwhile, many young people were squatting on individual couches in shared apartments, trying to work with flickering wifi. No gardens, Ashtanga on the kitchen floor, or nice walks with the new pup for them. If millennials / millennials were lucky they were on time off. If they weren’t, they were fired and fired, defeated, living with their parents.

Vaccinations could end up taking much longer than government plans. And it is as much a question of class as of age. Not all baby boomers have comfortable lockdowns – they will have aging parents and struggling children, and financial problems won’t just affect the young.

However, look at the post-pandemic landscape from a younger person’s perspective: a guaranteed global financial crisis, key years of life building have been derailed. Not only that, one of your greatest assets, your golden youth, puts you at the back of the immunization queue. And so you have to wait and watch (and boil) as the Covid-secured seniors walk out of the pandemic prison to start consuming, barging into restaurants as soon as they open, booking vacations away from ‘Plague Island’. And why not? Except that for many young people their whole life is like one big plague island.

Is this one of the problems of older generations from the perspective of younger people – the impression that little thought, if any, is given to how others cope? It’s strange to think that the vaccine, the big company to get out of prison, could evolve into another dark and ugly intergenerational row. Even stranger, with a minimum of tact some of this resentment could be avoided. If older people have something to learn from the pandemic, it may not be saying everything about them.

Who would stay in Britain now if they could escape?

Is a reported exodus of foreign-born workers entirely due to the pandemic? A new study from the Center of Excellence for Economic Statistics estimates that the UK’s population may have fallen to 1.3 million in the past year, the biggest drop since World War II.

London is believed to have lost 700,000 people, a drop which could be largely due to job losses caused by Covid, particularly in the hospitality, entertainment and service sectors. Instead of appearing in the unemployment figures, this development manifests itself in return migration. It is believed that foreign-born workers who find themselves unemployed or on leave have decided to return to their home countries. Others may have chosen to return due to UK Covid infection rates.

It all sounds interesting and plausible, but there might be another reason for a sudden exodus – the hopeful ghoul they call Brexit. The figures cover the year up to September, when the last post-Brexit negotiations were in full swing. It seems logical that many foreign-born workers stared at a country that not only undervalued and demonized them, but was also screwing up the pandemic by thinking, “Damn it!” and booked a one-way ticket home. Who could blame them?

It’s relatively easy not to feel the loss of the hordes that are said to have left the capital, but let’s see how things feel different after the pandemic. With the numbers still being assessed, they will likely end up including a fair number of people of British descent who have taken to social media making it very clear that they intend to be part of the post-Brexit brain drain.

The big deal this post-Brexit (and Covid-riddled) island faces isn’t going to keep people out, it’s going to convince (no, begging) to stay.

Stories of long-distance pigeon and extinct raven don’t take flight

A few birds made the headlines last week. One involved a pigeon called Joe, a brave little guy who appeared to have traveled to Australia from the United States, only for authorities in Melbourne to say he posed a biosecurity threat and should be repressed.

So much for this heartwarming tale of feathered effort (and potential hook for a new Disney franchise). Joe’s American identity tag turned out to be wrong; he was of Australian descent and wouldn’t have to be killed after all, just broadly denounced as a winged fraud. If Disney isn’t interested in Joe’s story, maybe Black mirror would be?

Meanwhile, Merlina, Queen of the Crows of the Tower of London, has disappeared, presumed dead. According to legend, if there are less than six crows in the tower, the kingdom will fall. Turns out Tower has a “spare” crow (bringing the total to seven) and may soon be able to replace Merlina with a new chick from her breeding program.

How beautiful, but also a little boring. Call me a tragic old gothic, but I liked the dark thrill of the Falling Realms. Things are pretty tough right now, so we might as well go to the Edgar Allen Poe.

• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist