Rewarding failure?

Heard a lot about this lately - mainly in regard to people getting what are perceived as unwarranted bonuses, but the Civil Service are past masters in the art.  Make a bit of a mess of your job, and you risk being demoted or maybe even sacked, but make a complete Horlicks of it, and you'll probably get promoted!  Any Civil Servant of any experience can almost certainly quote examples of this - I sure can.  So I was not really surprised to see that the Head of the Border Agency - which has been slated for consistent failures over passport and visa checks - has been promoted to chief executive of HM Revenue and Customs.  'Twas ever thus.