Controversial child protection chief Sue Berelowitz quit her job with a six-figure payoff – only to be immediately rehired on almost £1,000 a day

The days when disgraced officials retired to their study with a bottle of Glennhoddle and a loaded service revolver are long gone.

But even so, the refusal of those in a position of authority not only to take any responsibility for their failures but also the way in which they expect to be rewarded for their incompetence is mind-boggling.

In the latest case, a blundering child protection chief has walked off with a six- figure redundo payment and strolled straight back into a lucrative consultancy in the same Government department.

At the end of April, Sue Berelowitz was allowed to take voluntary redundancy from her £99,333-a-year role as Deputy Children's Commissioner. She received a golden goodbye of £134,000.

Miss Berelowitz had been roundly condemned for writing a report which denied there was a disproportionate problem with gangs of British Asians grooming young girls for sex. As numerous recent court cases have illustrated alarmingly, this was seriously at odds with the true picture.

But the day after she resigned, she was immediately rehired as a £960-a-day consultant to lead an inquiry into child abuse — which is exactly what she had been doing in her old job since last July.

Oliver Berman, from the Office of the Children's Commissioner, said she had been reappointed because of her 'particular expertise'.

What expertise?

This is the same woman who was criticised for her 'highly emotional' conclusions about grooming by predominantly Pakistani predators — crimes for which dozens of men from all over the country have subsequently been convicted.

Miss Berelowitz, 61, will work up to nine days a month, which means she will be able to earn as much as she did when she was on full-time staff.

Nice work if you can get it. And you can get it if you are lucky enough to be employed as a public sector bureaucrat. After all, it's only taxpayers' money.

The worst example of this contempt for the paying public was the shameless Sharon Shoesmith, the Haringey social services chief who was sacked after presiding over the Baby P scandal.

Instead of crawling away under the nearest stone and staying there, Shoesmith brazenly portrayed herself as the victim — not the child who had been tortured to death on her watch — and was eventually given a £679,000 pay-off.

We've seen numerous reports of senior managers taking fat redundancy packages one day, only to re-emerge in a similar job the following Monday. The NHS is one giant Pullman-class gravy train for healthcare 'professionals' — Britain's most blatant Bisto Kids.

An in-depth audit by the Mail Investigations Unit recently revealed how NHS bosses had awarded themselves £35 million in pay rises over the past year — at a time when the health service was supposed to be facing a financial crisis. Many who had previously been full-time salaried employees had baled out with a platinum parachute and then been re-employed in the same job as freelance consultants on up to £5,000 a day.

One of them was paid £25,000 for two months' work — but spent much of that time shuttling between a villa in Spain and a health spa in California. Another earned £1.26 million in a single year, while her failing NHS trust declared a loss of £4.4 million and was investigated for disturbing death and infection rates.

The worst example of this contempt for the paying public was the shameless Sharon Shoesmith, the Haringey social services chief who was sacked after presiding over the Baby P scandal

The sense of entitlement among the public sector professional class is simply staggering and utterly unjustified. A culture has been allowed to develop in which failure and incompetence bring fabulous financial rewards.

The entire public sector seems to be run for the benefit of the people who work in it.

Only yesterday we learned that, according to the Government's workplace illness adviser Dame Carol Black, public sector employees take 24 per cent more 'sickies' than their private sector counterparts.

Dame Carol said there was 'undoubtedly a correlation' between the extended length of time Government staff receive full pay and benefits while off sick and the scale of their absenteeism.

But the Cabinet Office refused to investigate the link because it was a political 'hot potato'.

Sounds about right. Too close to home. It's not in civil servants' interests to highlight the favourable employment conditions they enjoy at taxpayers' expense compared with those who work for private firms.

So it's not surprising also to learn that the Treasury rubber-stamped the Berelowitz deal during the run-up to the General Election without getting ministerial approval. Officials claim that they were 'unaware' that she was being immediately rehired as a consultant.

Someone must have been aware. She didn't just turn up at reception the following day on the off-chance there might be a bit of freelance work going.

'Remember me? I used to work here until yesterday. I was at a bit of a loose end and wondered if you might need a hand. You do? Marvellous. I can start immediately.'

The Office of the Children's Commissioner is now lauching an inquiry into whether Miss Berelowitz can be made to repay her redundancy money. Perhaps they will ask her to investigate herself.

Call it £960 a day for cash.

The 'savage cuts' in the NHS must be much worse than we thought.

A surgeon is under investigation after allegedly using a rusty hacksaw to amputate a pensioner's leg.

Halfway through the operation, his knife hit a metal plate. You'd think they might have taken an X-ray first, just in case.

With no suitable instrument available at the hospital, a member of staff was dispatched to B&Q to buy a tool able to cut through metal.

Unfortunately, the DIY superstore had shut for the night and he returned empty-handed.

A source at Ayr Hospital said that as the patient was already prepped and anaesthetised, a decision was taken to continue with the amputation.

'The surgeon decided to use a saw found in a storage area. The saw was sterilised by soaking it in some disinfectant solution.'

So that's all right, then.

Jackson Carlaw, health spokesman for what's left of the Scottish Conservatives, compared the operation to 'improvised surgery on Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar'.

It's just a pity that B&Q wasn't open, otherwise, while they were at it, as well as a Black & Decker chainsaw, they could have bought the old boy a nice wooden leg.

I told you Wee Burney was lying

Former Lib Dem Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael is facing calls to resign as an MP after admitting he was the source of a story about Nicola Sturgeon secretly telling the French Ambassador that she wanted to see Call Me Dave back in Downing Street.

Wee Burney has thrown her toys out of the pram and is accusing Carmichael of 'dirty tricks' by ordering the leak of a memo containing her remarks to a national newspaper.

Carmichael now says the leak was an 'error of judgment'. Why? It may have been a breach of protocol, but what was the big secret?

Former Lib Dem Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael (pictured) is facing calls to resign as an MP

I told you before the election that Sturgeon wanted the Tories back in power in Westminster, so she could advance her separatist cause.

A Cabinet Office inquiry has concluded that there was 'no reason to doubt' the accuracy of the reported conversation between the First Minister and the French Ambassador.

Yet Sturgeon spent the entire campaign telling voters that she wanted to 'lock the Tories out' of Downing Street for good. So surely Carmichael has performed a public service in revealing her true intentions.

Sturgeon lied repeatedly to the electorate and she's been caught out. If anyone should resign, she should.

It must be the most bizarre birth certificate since Trigger told Del Boy that under Father's Name, his mum had put down: 'Some soldiers.'

Elton John has upset feminist writer Germaine Greer by registering his partner David Furnish as the 'mother' of their sons, Zachary and Elijah.

The boys were born to the same surrogate mum in California and share the same anonymous egg donor.

Greer said the decision by Elton and his husband to claim that Furnish is the 'mother' undermines the very concept of motherhood.

You don't have to be a raging 'homophobe' to agree with her. Claiming a man can be a husband and a mother is complete madness, but a logical development of the 'equality' agenda.

The only thing that surprises me is, given the recent gay wedding cake case in Northern Ireland, Elton and Mummy didn't call the boys Bert and Ernie.

Let's all pray 4 Moo-Amba

If you thought the story about police scrambling a helicopter, dozens of officers, 20 patrol cars and six marksmen to shoot dead a stray cow was rip-roaring bonkers, you ain't heard nothing yet.

On Friday, around 60 locals mounted a candlelit vigil for the late cow, a Limousin heifer called Bessie, in Chicken Road, Wallsend, Northumbria.

You couldn't make it up.

Some of them were dressed in cow suits, others left sympathy cards. A further 7,000 people paid their respects on Facebook. If I'd have known, I could have knocked out a few Portashrines, left over from the Pray 4 Muamba fiasco.

This time, it was Pray 4 Moo-amba.

There's a wonderful photo on the local newspaper's website of the Cook family — mum Melanie, dad Dave and 11-year-old son Charlie, kneeling in silent tribute to Bessie in front of a candle and a model cow they'd brought along to mark the sad occasion. Another woman showed how much she cared by waving a flickering candle app on her iPhone.