Neat hair, neat features, neatness itself; but immigration minister Mark Harper has resigned over the untidy business of his cleaner’s visa. She doesn’t have indefinite leave to remain and he’s the employer who really should have vetted her more carefully, being also the minister in charge of doubling the fine for failure to check; and the government immigration spokesman who sent the vans round last summer saying ‘Go Home or Face Arrest’.

Neat, neat, not-so-neat. Interviewed, he never misses a beat. I did this, I did that, I should apply a higher standard to my own behaviour. Therefore…..
No traction in his seamless voice. Smooth words from a Teflon talker. But if his ministerial career is remembered at all, it will be for the sticky end.

Meanwhile a young male giraffe called Marius was put down in Copenhagen Zoo this morning in an effort to prevent in-breeding among giraffes in captivity.

Photographed poking his head towards us, Marius the Lugubrious – except this is only us projecting human characteristics onto a dumb animal, now deceased.

When various zoos, including one in Doncaster, were keen to adopt Marius, there was never any concern about his immigration status.
Though the Copenhagen keepers cut up the corpse and fed it to the lions, in this regard Marius was afforded more humanity than Mark Harper’s cleaner.