'Covid inquiry is a sideshow led by smug lawyers with 20-20 hindsight'

The Covid inquiry has become a circus

Daily Mail leader article 

Dominic Cummings "went on the attack" at the Covid inquiry "in characteristically belligerent fashion", says the Daily Mail leader, "spraying bullets in all directions". But while Boris Johnson's former right-hand man "may be right about the ineptitude of the Whitehall Blob", he's "hardly in a position to throw stones". And "what is the purpose of this circus of an inquiry" anyway? "Smug lawyers with 20-20 hindsight excoriating the personalities involved may be fascinating theatre, but it's largely a sideshow."

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Alex Salmond is still haunting the SNP

Chris Deerin in The New Statesman

Scotland's ruling party "has deservedly gained a reputation for playing fast and loose with important information that might in time cause it embarrassment", writes Chris Deerin for The New Statesman. The alleged deletion of senior government figures' WhatsApp messages about the pandemic "adds to the growing appearance of SNP slipperiness". And as former first minister Alex Salmond should know, the "idea that you’re 'dodgy', once it’s implanted in the electorate’s mind, is especially toxic and hard to shift". 

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How older women defy evolutionary logic

Anjana Ahuja in the Financial Times

"From a purely evolutionary point of view, we older women are a mystery," says science writer Anjana Ahuja in the Financial Times. "We serve no apparent purpose because we cannot reproduce after the menopause." Some experts point to the grandmother hypothesis – an extra pair of hands for child-rearing – but "older women are not just grandmothers: they are valued universally for their economic contributions, caregiving and wise counsel". Regardless of whether "the scientific enigma persists, the social reasons for our continued existence seem much clearer".

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How Biden can convince the world that the US is serious on climate

The Washington Post editorial board

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