More than two decades on, there’s still something about what Linda Tripp did to Monica Lewinsky that makes you gasp at the female-on-female betrayal and also makes you wonder whether this is the most painful kind of betrayal.

Tripp has just died of cancer. When Lewinsky learned that Tripp was sick, she said: “No matter the past… I hope for her recovery. I can’t imagine how difficult this is for her family.” A graceful response and one in stark contrast to what Lewinsky said when the then US president Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about their affair: “I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened. And I hate Linda Tripp.”

Her loathing for the older woman was understandable. Taken into Lewinsky’s confidence about Clinton, Tripp secretly recorded the conversations (giving them to the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr) and encouraging the former White House intern to keep the semen-stained dress (for evidence). Even after relentless censure, ridicule and disgrace, Tripp continued to view herself as a righteous whistleblower. However, 22 hours of secretly taped conversations suggest something less edifying: one woman (naive, obsessed) spilling her secrets to another woman, who coolly gathered information, then used it to jam her young friend’s head on to a spike.

Too simplistic? Maybe. The truth is always more complicated. After all, it was Clinton who put the main wrecking ball through the lives of the three women involved: Monica, Hillary and Linda. The same Clinton who recently said he’d had the affair with Lewinsky to “manage his anxieties”. (Do at least try to stay classy, Bill.)

Women are also complicated – as human and fallible as any male betrayer. Certainly, women shouldn’t be held to idealised standards of behaviour, which have a nasty habit of turning into bear traps anyway.

Nevertheless, a woman betraying another woman so completely, in such an intentional strategic manner, is shocking and, in most female lifetimes, rare. While all betrayal is devastating, maybe because of entrenched sexism the female-on-female variety has an extra whiff of sulphur. It goes against the unspoken code, the feeling among women that ultimately we look out for each other, that it’s them and us.

It’s the impulse that makes little girls pinky-promise their eternal devotion and teenagers keep secrets until they die. It’s the young woman bursting into tears in the nightclub lavatory and finding herself comforted by a bunch of strangers who are her instant best friends. It’s there behind workplace mentoring schemes. It’s what makes younger women turn to older women for advice and older women feel proud to give it. And it’s been there throughout #MeToo, with women giving testimonies and supporting each other, whatever the personal cost.

Whatever was going on between Tripp and Lewinsky all those years ago, this crucial element – of instinctive warmth and trust between women – was missing, but only on one side. Lewinsky went to Tripp believing that the sisterhood exists; Tripp lied to her that it didn’t.

No wonder amorous pandas dislike peeping toms

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ying Ying and Le Le are finally getting it on after 13 years together. Photograph: Ocean Park Hong Kong/AFP via Getty Images

How would you like to be gawped at while you’re trying to have sex? Perhaps it’s best you don’t answer that, but a couple of middle-aged giant pandas in China have made their feelings on the matter abundantly clear.

Ying Ying and Le Le of the Ocean Park theme park in Hong Kong have known each other for 13 years, with no “action” to speak of. Now they have mated, there is hope that a baby panda could come along and some people think it’s because they are finally getting some privacy during the lockdown.

After the closure of the park in late January, the amorous pandas were first spotted “cuddling more intensely than usual” and there were more panda lurrve signs such as scent markings and Ying Ying – the lady panda – “spending more time in the water”, which must be the panda equivalent of shaving your legs.

It would appear that having loads of humans poking cameras at you is a major turn-off. Who’d have thought it? All this raises serious issues about the wellbeing of not just pandas but all caged animals, how much this could be affecting libido and how much better off they would be left in the wild.

At the very least, it needs acknowledging that onlookers are stressing pandas out and stopping them getting it on. Whatever other problems pandas have with mating, what amounts to human-on-panda dogging has to stop. Clearly, pandas need a bit of privacy, the equivalent of Barry White playing on the turntable, perhaps a lava lamp on its lowest setting. If you wouldn’t like people rubbernecking at you while you’re having sex, spare a thought for modest pandas.

Amazon rides roughshod to world domination

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeff Bezos: laughing all the way to the bank. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

Do we need to be careful that events don’t lead us to sleepwalk into a Planet Amazon scenario?

Debenhams has called in the administrators again and many other smaller retailers are in trouble. Meanwhile, multibillionaire Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has faced strike action over claims of inadequate worker protection and putting “profits before safety”.

Furthermore, while the online goliath has dominated the marketplace for years, arguably killing off the high street, it’s now making it near impossible for Amazon third-party sellers of non-essential items (including books) to operate, having temporarily withdrawn access to the Fulfilled by Amazon feature in which firms bulk ship their goods to Amazon warehouses and use their delivery network for a fee. Where is the protection for these small businesses?

This is not a wild attack on Amazon – most people use it, it’s not responsible for coronavirus and the emphasis on essential items was understandable, particularly during our stockpiling phase.

However, while Amazon says it has taken “intense” measures to protect staff, it’s imperative that worker concerns are properly dealt with, whatever the cost. Moreover, such developments expose the power of Amazon and the essential vulnerability of the small businesses it claims to support. Memo to Bezos: don’t make people suspect that they’re going to wake from this nightmare to discover a retail reality where only Amazon and the cockroaches survived.

• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist