TALKING twaddle is now one of the highest paid jobs in the world. As one of the most proficient twaddle talkers in the business - our correspondence columns are congested with testimony to that effect - I should be lining the cat litter with fivers. Truth be told, the church mouse has better prospects.

Why? I talk the wrong type of twaddle. Sure, my half-cooked convictions are as inconsistent as anything scribbled on a fag packet and called a policy by the Home Secretary. But outside of Whitehall, this sort of stuff has limited value. There's more money in a Christmas pudding.

If only I'd gone down the consultancy route. With my knack for hogwash I could have cleaned up.

Andersen Consulting is currently paying its student recruits £10,000 as a "golden hello". They get six grand before doing a stitch of work and another four if they stay put for a year. Then they trouser a handsome starting salary of around £28,000.

No one really knows what a management consultant does. It's something to do with telling gullible bosses at infinitely more valuable businesses that most of their staff are worthless, even though they work twice as hard as management consultants for a fraction of the pay.

The critical part of being a consultant, it seems to me, is convincing the world that this unnecessary service is invaluable. Thus creative types cook up this sort of moonshine: "Andersen Consulting is a leading global management and technology consulting firm whose mission is to help its clients create their future" (come again?); "we created the concept of business integration... before the power of the business integration value proposition became obvious" (you what, love?).

This guff is no more insightful than a fortune cookie - with the emphasis on fortune. Andersen Consulting is worth several billion pounds. William Hague, you will not be surprised to learn, used to be a consultant.

If a £10,000 "golden hello" sounds like a lot of money, it's nothing compared to a "golden bog off". Last year, nine executives grabbed severance packages worth more than £1 million as they fled the boardroom. When Bob Ayling was ousted from the top job at British Airways, following that company's Concorde-style nosedive, he lugged nearly £2 million with him.

But when you're a top boss you're never going to be short of brass - there's your brass neck for starters. The pay of Britain's greediest directors rose by 16.5 per cent last year, four times the average pay increase. According to a survey by The Guardian, more than 110 execs made a million - although, tellingly, only one of these was a woman. I fear this probably reflects discrimination in the boardroom rather than admirable restraint by the women.

Of course, these guys do have a lot of responsibilities. They run big companies. It is essential that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. In this case, the left hand is wielding the jobs axe while the right is stuffing great piles of grubby cash into pin-striped pockets.

Compare their multi-million pound pay and benefits packages to the jobs advertised in the Evening Press last week. Wanted: staff nurse, salary £14,890; charity shop manager, £9,566; university technicians, £9,306; mental health resource centre worker, £12,192; pupil support assistant, £7.39 an hour; home care assistant, £5.10 an hour. Supply teachers are even lured with the promise of being entered into a draw, top prize £5,000.

For these paltry sums our top execs would not even set the alarm, let alone get out of bed in the morning. But then, we are talking about ordinary pay for ordinary people who do nothing important - just look after the sick, teach our children, help the mentally ill and ensure that the frail elderly do not die of starvation or loneliness. That's nothing to talking twaddle for a living.