Your report on the wages of the county council's top management team (Oxford Mail, November 29) didn't tell us much.

Is £160,000 too much for a chief executive, or £100,000-plus exorbitant for directors of services?

These pre-tax figures are the rewards for many years of hard work, gaining qualifications and acquiring necessary skills and experience (presumably in short supply).

Given the ages they reach such positions, plus burn-out, many won't remain at that level for too many years.

Unison offers its standard response and, as usual, seems to want them to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and seek little reward, other than joy of service.

That, of course is not the real world.

It's unlikely Unison consulted its members closest to them, in order to gain fuller understanding of workloads and abilities of top managers.

Nonetheless, something does seem wrong here.

Not being told exactly what they are paid makes taxpayers more than a little suspicious.

Mind you, we can see why they are all smiling.

Perhaps, we need to consider more than pay here.

What about 'fat cat' expenses, fringe benefits, and early retirement on considerable pensions?

If that's not enough, consider extensive professional and political networking, which plays a major part in deciding senior managers' career prospects.

And how far are they subject to continuous performance assessments, and who are the assessors?

STEPHEN WARD Tudor Close Oxford