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In his support of the Chancellor Alistair Darling's controversial - some would say suicidal - moves on capital gains tax, Wolf's has been an almost lone howl in the wilderness. I fear in his contrarian analysis of Darling's CGT moves that he may well be talking a fair bit of sense, despite the fact that his scribblings have attracted squeaks of outrage - not least from his old editor Richard Lambert, now top banana at the CBI.

A bit of back-to-basics might not go amiss here. The simple facts are that if you earn shed loads of cash - and those who do have enjoyed a pretty nice run under New Labour since 1997 - then you should expect to pay your fair share of tax. (And I'm not talking about stupid Old Labour shenanigans like the 'politics of envy' 98% rates of the '60s and '70s.) If you're rich you won't get much back for your tax pains. You won't be using the government's second-rate schools, you take a helicopter rather than struggle on its pot-holed, heavily-congested roads and you definitely won't be relying on its meagre state pension when you hang up your boots. But coughing up is all part of the social contract and why you'd rather live here than in Paris or New York, or, god forbid, Frankfurt. 

In many ways the wealthy only have themselves to blame for getting some heat. With stories floating around this summer about big cheeses in private equity paying less to the Exchequer than their cleaning ladies and all sorts of evil tales about fleet-footed Res Non Doms getting off scot free, it was clear there was trouble coming down the line. Even the Tories scent political gain in squeezing the wealthy at the moment.

It's also true that there won't be many entrepreneurs out there who don't bother taking any risks in business because now under the new regime they will only receive 82% of the gain from their businesses rather than 90%. The thing about the truly entrepreneurial is that they can't help forging forward and taking risk - it's the way they are made.

As the wise old Wolf noted: 'Arguments from relatively wealthy people that they ought to have their incomes taxed at far lower rates than everyone else, because of the benefits they shower upon us, should be treated with contempt.' So, cough up and quit whinging - it's not that bad, and ultimately you aren't going to be that much poorer. Don't you know there's a war to pay for?