Making traffic lights of the situation

BBC: Amber Rudd resigns as home secretary

Amber Rudd has resigned as home secretary, saying she “inadvertently misled” MPs over targets for removing illegal immigrants. The Windrush scandal had heaped pressure on Ms Rudd, who faced criticism over whether she knew about Home Office removals targets.

Of course, what we’re all hoping she’ll do now is leave the Tories, cross the floor of the Commons, and join Caroline Lucas’s party.

Then she will forever be known as Green Amber Rudd.

(See what I did, there?)

Taking back control

Guardian: Brexit blamed as record number of EU nurses give up on Britain

Record numbers of nurses and midwives from EU27 countries quit Britain last year, fuelling fears that a Brexit brain drain will deepen the NHS’s already chronic staffing crisis. A total of 3,962 such staff from the European Economic Area (EEA) left the Nursing and Midwifery Council register between 2017 and 2018.

Blue passports, everyone! Hold on to that thought… Blue passports!

Bird impersonator

Neil Armstrong (no, not that Neil Armstrong) reviewing Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe by Gordon Corers in the latest edition of Literary Review:

Among others, we meet Viscount Tredegar, an occultist and friend of Aleister Crowley. He was for a time in charge of the section of the army that supplied MI14(d) with birds but was eventually court-martialled for gossiping about Columba’s work. His defence cited his unhappy childhood and the fact that his mentally ill mother had built herself a large bird’s nest in the living room and sat in it wearing a beak.