According to the latest Rich List, the recession has wiped £155bn off the books of the UK's 1,000 richest people.

Of course it is all notional money. Their assets were worth X amount when the market was booming; now those assets are worth maybe a third less.

They are not running about with a hole in the pocket or signing on for a jobseekers allowance. Although some of their former employees could well be on the dole as the rich downsize their operations.

The Sunday Times list also reveals that the number of billionaires in the country is shrinking faster than a woollen jumper in a boil wash, down from 75 last year to 43 this year.

The list was published on the same day that some well-heeled entrepreneurs were threatening to leave the UK for tax havens abroad because Alistair Darling had the audacity to put up income tax to 50% for those earning more than £150,000 a year.

To listen to the bleatings of Hugh Osmond, whose business empire spans insurance and pub chains, and who says he is moving to Switzerland, or Peter Hargreaves, founder of the country's biggest financial advisers' firm, and who is looking to go to the Isle of Man or Monaco, one would think that they were about to be made penniless by the Chancellor.

In fact, because they are wealthy and because they have access to the best financial advice, they probably, proportionately, lose less of their income than the ordinary working man.

Those of us on what Sinn Fein like to call industrial scale wages, lose something around one-third to the taxman and national insurance.

We have no option if we are in the PAYE scheme of things. Entrepreneurs can arrange their financial affairs much more profitably. But even if they cannot, why do they think that the country owes them a living? If they have built up successful business empires, good luck to them. No doubt they have gained some fairly hefty rewards along the way.

In fact it is those high earnings which now enable them to consider moving to some expensive tax haven. Again, good luck to them. If they can find a way to avoid paying tax, so be it. But please stop pretending that it is some form of martyrdom, being forced into tax-free exile. Oh, the misery of it.

At a time of recession there is no more hateful sound than the whining of the wealthy. We never heard a bleat from them when they were coining it hand over fist during the boom years. Or we never heard from those entrepreneurs who outsourced their operations to low cost countries abroad, throwing their own workers on the scrapheap — a much worse fate than paying a few quid extra in taxes.

Tim Waterstone, owner of the bookstore chain which bears his name, and a former Labour Party donor, says the 50% tax rate is a disincentive to entrepreneurs. How? If they cannot get their accountants to cut their tax bill, then they simply move somewhere else.

Let us not forget that the current economic mess was created by people on very large incomes, payment for their supposed expertise. All those huge salaries got in return was greed and more greed, until the whole paper house went up in a bonfire.

There are more than 2m people on the dole queues of the UK who would love to be paying tax at this moment. But, instead of working they are begging for benefits.

The complaints of the uber-rich must make the bile rise in their stomachs.