AS an avid reader of newspapers all my life and as a writer for newspapers for the best part of 50 years, I would have thought by now that nothing reported came as much of a surprise to me. All my friends in this business – and pleasure – of journalism will tell you that we have long developed a stock response to events: “Oh aye – they’re at it again!” A certain amount of cynicism is necessary to survival in the media trade.

But I have a confession: I was shocked and sickened by the interview that Sharon Shoesmith gave to the Today programme at the end of last week.

Mrs Shoesmith, you will remember, is the child care executive sacked by Haringey Council following the appalling death in her territory of 18-month-old Peter Connelly, the little boy who was found dying in his cot back in August 2007, with a broken back and broken ribs, with the ends of his fingers cut off and his nails ripped out. I apologise for reminding you of these horrific details, but I am afraid their statement is required in order to put subsequent events in their proper context.

I mean, if you were in charge of a department of social services under whose surveillance such a terrible event had taken place, what would be your reaction? How could you live with yourself? The subsequent Serious Case Review had concluded that Peter’s death was entirely avoidable. It declared there had been “a catalogue of failures.”

Baby P had been seen 60 – yes, 60 – times by medical and social workers. He had been placed on the Child Protection Register. He had even been taken from his irresponsible and psychopathic mother’s “care” on more than one occasion. In other words, this little child was thoroughly let down by the institutional authorities set up to preserve and protect him. The official report on the Haringey Social Services Department described it as “a shambles.”

So, I ask again, what would you do if you were the person in charge of that authority and paid more than a cabinet minister? You would want to crawl away and die, wouldn’t you? Of course you would – because you have more than an atom of decency in you, and I hope I have too. But not Mrs Shoesmith, who has appealed her case and won. And so now, having been in charge of the shambles which allowed this atrocity to happen, she finds herself acquitted of all responsibility and there is even talk of her receiving £1m compensation.

When challenged about this outcome by John Humphrys last Saturday morning she said: “I don’t do blame.”

But you were responsible, Mrs Shoesmith.

You were paid £133,000-a-year to preside over a department of child care which ought to have at least a measure of competence. Now you show no contrition, no ordinary human sorrow at such a terrible death – the kind of sorrow which, even those of us remote from the case, cannot help feeling. How do you live with yourself, madam, when you behold your face in the mirror over the wash-basin in the morning? While you consider uppermost in your mind not the suffering of little Peter but your own perfect exoneration?

When such gross irresponsibility is not only excused but seems about to be generously rewarded, Northern Echo readers might kindly forgive a raddled old hack like me if he feels he has to go out into the street and be sick.