OXFORD City Council’s inflation-busting pay rises to its senior directors is looking more and more unjustifiable now we can reveal that they were unique across the county.

And the more councillors like John Tanner try to justify it, the more their arguments fail to stack up to the hard-pressed taxpayer.

Last week we revealed that four officers at the city received pay rises of between 11.6 and 34.6 per cent — or between £14,000 and £23,000 in cold hard cash — right when it was apparent the country’s finances were in a mess and we would all have to tighten our belts.

Now we discover that for the same period, senior managers at Oxfordshire County Council did not take a rise because of the recession.

Cherwell District Council’s top personnel received what anyone would view as an acceptable three per cent.

Staff at West Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire district councils did receive increases but these were under amalgamations between authorities, so staff took on more work and ultimately saved money through job reductions.

Yet Mr Tanner crassly tries to defend Oxford’s rises with the hackneyed phrase: “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

Most taxpayers would not call £85,117 or £126,361 peanuts.

And it misses the point. Either the council had been pchronically underpaying its senior staff or these rises are just not justifiable.