Yesterday, the Mail reported how a stretch limo was hired to ferry seven asylum-seekers from a village near Heathrow to their new homes in Manchester.

The farcical journey - which cost £3,000 - is typical of a border system that treats taxpayers’ money with contempt and makes decisions that are an affront to commonsense. Here, we highlight ten of the most bewildering - and infuriating - cases.

Absurd: Pictured is a stretch limo which was used to ferry asylum seekers from London to Manchester, at a cost of £3,000

CATCH THE BUS? NO THANKS, I'LL GO BY TAXI

In 2011, it emerged that asylum-seekers were being ferried to and from court hearings by a private taxi company costing the taxpayer thousands of pounds - even though the local bus did the trip for £1.80.

Each five-mile trip from the train station to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal Centre in Newport, Gwent, cost £8.70 in a cab. Around £2,500 a month was spent ferrying the claimants to Columbus House.

Bizarrely, the Tribunal Service said the use of taxis had been a condition imposed by the local council when the centre was given planning permission.

THE LUXURY HOTEL

In 2013, more than 100 asylum-seekers were ordered to live in a luxury hotel favoured by Manchester United stars - at a cost to the taxpayer of up to £400,000.

Under a contract held by Serco, the migrants were booked in at the suburban 50-bedroom Amblehurst Hotel in Sale, near Manchester.

Rooms at the hotel - popular for corporate events, and once used by United players for a party - normally cost up to £125 a night. The Conservative-run Trafford council in Greater Manchester was given just 48 hours’ notice of the asylum-seekers’ arrival.

'ASYLUM SEEKERS'... FROM SPAIN

Britain has squandered an astonishing £4.2 million of taxpayers’ money processing 'absurd' asylum claims by EU citizens, including Spaniards, the French and Poles.

Despite living in safe European countries, 551 people from inside the EU have claimed asylum in the past five years. The claims have no chance of success but, under existing Whitehall rules, the applicants are entitled to a full interview and a detailed refusal letter.

They can also try to claim state handouts while cases are being considered. Last week, Theresa May announced the ridiculous regime was finally being scrapped.

HIJACKER WORKING AT HEATHROW

In perhaps the most egregious abuse of our chaotic system, nine Afghans won the right to live in Britain after hijacking a passenger flight in their homeland in 2000.

The Boeing 727 was flown to Stansted in Essex, where the captors threatened to blow up the flight and kill the 160 passengers on board during a four-day siege unless they were granted asylum.

The gang was jailed, but later cleared on appeal, released and given the right to remain in Britain rent-free, receiving an estimated £150,000 a year in benefits.

Incredibly, in 2008, one of the hijackers was found working as a cleaner... at Heathrow airport. Nazamuddin Mohammidy had a British Airways pass allowing access to secure areas.

THE LIBYAN SEX ATTACKERS

Earlier this month, it was reported how three Libyans who had been jailed for molesting women in a drunken rampage after being invited to the UK to undergo military training were seeking asylum to stay here permanently.

Ibrahim Naji El Maarfi, Khaled El Azibi and Mohammed Abdalsalam were jailed for attacking four women while training at Bassingbourn Barracks in Cambridgeshire in order to return to Libya to help improve security there.

David Cameron said after they were jailed that the soldiers should not be allowed to stay here. But he was powerless to stop them using human rights laws - and accessing legal aid - to fight removal on the grounds they risk persecution if sent home because their crimes have brought Libya into disrepute.

MOROCCAN WE KEEP BRINGING BACK

Failed asylum-seeker Rashid Ali wanted to leave Britain and get out of the cold. The Moroccan even stowed away on cargo ships at least six times.

Yet British border police are sticklers for the rules when people are trying to leave the country. He was caught by the authorities each time in a saga that has so far cost the taxpayer an estimated £300,000.

The farce centred on the fact that Ali ripped up his Moroccan passport and identity papers on arriving in Britain in 2004, hoping he would have more chance of gaining asylum here if he pretended to be Algerian.

Immigration officials said this meant the authorities in his native country would not allow him in without proof that he was one of its citizens. So they refused to let him leave.

FAMILY PUT UP IN A £2MILLION HOUSE

In 2010, there was public fury when it emerged a family of former asylum-seekers from Somalia were living in a £2.1 million luxury townhouse in one of Britain’s most exclusive addresses, at a cost to taxpayers of £8,000 a month.

Abdi and Sayruq Nur and their seven children moved into the three-storey property in fashionable Kensington because they didn’t like the ‘poorer’ part of the city they were living in.

Mr Nur said his former five-bedroom home in Kensal Rise, which cost £900 a week in housing benefit, was suitable for the family’s needs, but they were unhappy with the quality of local shops and schools.

iPADS AND BIG TVS

Last year, asylum-seekers given homes and benefits were found to have iPads, mobile phones and flat-screen TVs - despite claiming that they were ‘destitute’.

The National Audit Office found migrants seeking permanent asylum in Britain were earning an income above legal levels required for them to be given housing and payouts.

The spending watchdog said that inspectors had made around ten visits in three areas - the North-West, Yorkshire and the Humber, and London - and in at least one instance in each area they had found ‘indicators of prosperity’.

ALCOHOLIC WHO HAS TO STAY

Earlier this year, a Libyan convicted of 78 offences was told he would not be deported from Britain because he is an alcoholic.

Seven years after the man was first told he would be booted out of the country, he successfully argued he would be tortured and imprisoned in his homeland because alcohol is illegal.

It means he will be able to continue his drink-fuelled offending spree in Britain.

His case is estimated to have cost British taxpayers a six-figure sum, including the cost of police time, legal fees racked up by challenging his claims in the courts and the costs of keeping him in prison.

BETRAYAL OF AFGHAN INTERPRETERS

While asylum-seekers here are being ferried around in a stretch limo, hundreds of Afghan interpreters who served Britain during the war live in daily fear for their lives after being denied sanctuary in the UK.

Six claim to have had relatives killed because of their work for UK forces and more than 30 say family members have been beaten and threatened. Five claim relatives have been kidnapped and a pregnant wife was beaten so badly she lost her baby.

Two have been shot and wounded recently while three villagers were killed in an ambush targeting a translator.