It’s a grim time to be in your 20s, no doubt, but don’t blame it all on older people: being chopped up into ever smaller rivalries only serves the market

Intergenerational relations, or lack of them, is a subject I’ve been thinking about, on and off, since the financial crisis. I’ve read up on it, too – things such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report on intergenerational earnings mobility, which is wonky but full of fascinating information which needs some parsing. (Example: “While the educational attainment of ethnic minorities growing up in families eligible for free school meals is often higher than that of their white majority peers, their earnings outcomes show no such advantage.” Why not?) Another good source of data is the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s (OBR) report on intergenerational fairness – which, interestingly, is about the bluntest statement of fiscal unfairness that you can find. The OBR makes the point that “a current new-born baby would make an average net discounted contribution to the exchequer of £68,400 over its life-time, whilst future generations would have to contribute £159,700”. In plain English, people’s lifetime contribution to the state is going to double. That number is from 2011, and will definitely have got worse. In 2019, the House of Lords published a report on “Tackling intergenerational unfairness”, which doesn’t even bother pretending that the problem doesn’t exist. Mind you, not everyone agrees. A 2023 report from Imperial College Business School argues “there is more solidarity between generations than the ‘Millennials versus Boomers’ narrative would suggest”.

So this is definitely a question you can address through data – though there is a risk that you can use numbers to cherrypick your way to a conclusion you already held in advance. The other way of thinking about it is through lived experience. Not necessarily just your own. I often find myself thinking about the range of experiences and expectations in my own family, going no further than one generation back and one generation forward. I’m on the cusp between boomers and generation X. My children, both in their 20s, are firmly in generation Z. My parents were born in the 20s, in the west of Ireland and in South Africa. Between us, it’s a wildly different set of life stories, and chucking it into the capacious carpet bag labelled “generational differences” seems to me to be a violent oversimplification.

I’m somewhat in love with this weird, bold, silly restaurant

Trillium, the latest Birmingham restaurant by Glyn Purnell, is absolutely not one of those po-faced, sedate, mumbly kind of places where some Ludovico Einaudi is piped plinky-plonkily throughout the dining room while guests stiffly eat six teensy courses. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, even if Purnell, via the likes of Purnell’s and Plates, is pretty much synonymous throughout the Midlands with fancy, special-occasion, Michelin star-winning refinement. Yet on a recent Saturday night, in this brand new, glass-fronted, multicoloured mock birdcage, the talk is loud, the music is roaring and the plates of battered potato scallop with soured cream are appearing thick and fast.

Trillium is a genuine attempt by a Michelin-starred restaurateur to translate some of their best bits into a semi-rowdier yet still upmarket stage. It’s been attempted many times by other chefs (see Corenucopia and Bar Valette for details), but, miraculously, Purnell seems to have pulled it off. There’s a general feeling of people – gasp! – actually enjoying life. Naturally, you can, if you feel like splashing out, add some Sturia oscietra caviar to that spud scallop for an extra £25, but, as with most plates at Trillium and as I quickly find out, that potato is designed to feel luxuriously hedonistic anyway.

Pessimism can be a form of self-protection, so it might be helpful to reflect on where this pattern started

I am a 38-year-old woman with three kids and a husband. I often find myself expecting people to disappoint me, and make appointments anticipating that they will back out at the last minute. I then start to play the role of the victim, the friend who has been let down, and this whole narrative begins in my head.

I may invite a friend to something, but then come up with all the reasons why the thing is stupid and they wouldn’t want to come. I downplay it, saying: “Oh, it’s nothing fun”, and “Don’t worry if you can’t come”, even though I know I would have a great time.

Dr Hannah Gould on eco-funerals, being ‘the death person’ and the one thing everyone should know before they die

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Around 2040, Australia will reach peak death. A silver tsunami of boomers are predicted to propel the annual death rate to double that of today, putting immense strain on the healthcare and deathcare systems.

Dr Hannah Gould – a death scholar and author of the book How to Die in the 21st Century – calls it “boomergeddon”, and says it brings with it a certain range of ideas about what a good death looks like.

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How the desperate search for two missing girls in 2002 and their now-dead killer claimed its place in the country’s museum of appalling crimes

• Soham murderer Ian Huntley dies after prison attack

The death of Ian Huntley is, perhaps, a moment to pause and remember, and not to dwell on the manner and circumstances of his killing.

August 2002 is the time to return to, and the place is Soham: a pretty Cambridgeshire village that few outside the county, and possibly many within it too, knew much about before that summer. Before it happened.

The humiliation in Rome means it is now three defeats in a row for England, each more soul-destroying than the last

The haunted look writ large across the face of Maro Itoje said it all. England had burst into the Italy half, deep into the 80th minute, and Ollie Chessum was on the gallop, desperately trying to salvage something from the wreckage. Closer and closer they got before the shrill of the referee’s whistle confirmed England’s worst nightmare. Italy were about to put the seal on a first ever win in the fixture in 33 attempts and it was dawning on Itoje that he was powerless to stop it.

The final whistle blew and England players were, to a man, stunned. Shellshocked. Marcus Smith was on his haunches, Chandler Cunningham-South staring into the abyss. The camera panned to Tom Curry, ruled out after an injury in the warm-up, as he slumped on the bench wearing a look of despair. England in ruins. The empire that Steve Borthwick had built reduced to rubble. When responses to defeat are promised and repeatedly fail to materialise, the logical next step is regime change.

Reports of explosions in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as smoke billows above Tehran

• Full report: Iran rejects Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender as a ‘dream’

• From ‘peace president’ to Operation Epic Fury: Trump’s road to war

The Israeli military said it launched a wave of strikes “across Iran” on Sunday, targeting military sites.

A military statement said it had “initiated a wave of strikes targeting the Iranian terror regime military infrastructure across Iran”.

US president delivers stinging criticism of UK prime minister over delayed support for Iran war

• Middle East crisis – follow live

Donald Trump has renewed his stinging criticism of UK prime minister Keir Starmer over the lack of immediate UK support for the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

“The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, adding: “That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer – But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”

US president leaves open possibility of US troop deployment in Iran, while ruling out having Kurdish forces in Iraq mount an invasion

• US-Israel war on Iran – follow live

Donald Trump on Saturday offered only a vague description of what he meant by his demand for an unconditional surrender by Iran’s current regime, while leaving open the possibility of deploying American troops on the ground but ruling out asking Kurdish forces to mount an invasion.

“I said unconditional. It’s where they cry uncle or when they can’t fight any longer and there’s nobody around to cry uncle — that could happen too,” Trump said when pressed by the Guardian aboard Air Force One.

Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflict

Brash and bellicose, he sounded more like a cartoon bully than a sombre statesman. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” Pete Hegseth, wearing a red, white and and blue tie and pocket square, bragged to reporters at the Pentagon near Washington. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Hegseth, 45, a former Fox News TV host who now commands the world’s most powerful military, has this week become the face of Donald Trump’s war in Iran. That has set off for alarm bells for critics who warn that the Secretary of Defense – pointedly rebranded “Secretary of War” – has rapidly transformed the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological and religious crusade.