Top-Rate Taxpayers Should Stop Whingeing and Cough Up

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IT'S ALMOST two weeks now since the Budget, but still the whingeing goes on. Any commentary that has not been drowned out by MPs' expenses, Gurkhas or swine flu returns to one topic and one topic alone: the 50 per cent tax rate and other penalties for the highest earners.

Immediately after the Chancellor's speech the aggrieved rich were just one voice in the chorus. The others, mostly from the left, complained that there was nothing/very little/not enough for the poor or the pensioners or savers. They were right, there wasn't much - but then, in such parlous times, what did anyone expect?

Less remarked upon was that for the vast majority of earners, the Budget was …