The Government’s National Insurance Plans Are Despotic & Tyrannical
By Carol Kilgore The Conservative parties recent laws are all antithetical to freedom and are akin to the US no taxation without representation debate
The Conservative Government’s proposals to increase National
Insurance Contributions (NIC’s) from April will not only be ill-timed, as household utility bills are set to skyrocket, but also an unconstitutional form of taxation without representation.
That long celebrated slogan, used to rally the American colonists to fight for independence from British rule, should be echoing in the collective ears of a public, subjected to yet another round of tax hikes and net-zero policies. The combined impact of these unjust tax rises will be to drive more working people into poverty and serving up tyrannical special interests greater profits.
To heap upon a Covid-weary electorate this toxic mixture of increased taxes to fund the sinkhole of a broken social care system whilst allowing inflation to gallop at above 5% and OFGEM to raise the energy default price cap, will decimate the prosperity and economic opportunity for the majority of Britons.
The Conservatives’ poorly conceived price cap mechanism has in the last four months driven a large number of UK energy suppliers to bankruptcy as wholesale domestic gas market prices hit an all-time high to round. But this is only the beginning, as it heralds an onslaught of further increases for household utility bills that are expected to double by the spring.
The inevitable result will be fuel poverty for society’s less well off, including the elderly and most vulnerable. Renewable energy policies steal from the poor to help the wealthiest. Rich homeowners who have spare cash and space to set up eco-friendly houses with heat pumps, solar panels and sustainable fittings will ultimately reap the benefits of Number 10’s misguided green agenda, whilst the poorest must choose between heating and eating.
The £10 billion per year invoice for subsidising renewable energy sources through price guarantees and mandates for utilities to purchase wind and solar power will end up coming straight out of the pockets of the taxpaying public. This is effectively double taxation on income and consumption through the forced shock absorption of environmental targets.
None of this represents the will of the British voting public. The true cost of promises made by UK leaders to reduce gas emissions behind closed doors at COP26 and choke off domestic fossil fuel supplies were never revealed to the electorate.
The 2019 Conservative Manifesto did include a target to reach net zero by 2050 but its headliners were low taxation and debt reduction. The Conservatives’ Costings Document for 2019 forecasted additional capital expenditure beyond existing commitments at £100 billion in total over the five-year period from 2020 to 2025.
It looks like now more than half of that has gone to appeasing a green giant which gobbles up cash faster than a diesel guzzling eighteen-wheeled lorry. The Conservative Party did not win their stonking majority on a platform of eco-fanaticism, and certainly not in Red Wall territory.
As for the NIC hikes, the fine print in the 2019 Costings Document made provision for increased rates, but no mention of the effects of woke policies the £90,000 annual salaries currently on offer to NHS diversity and inclusion officers. It would have been interesting to see that point detailed with some explanatory footnotes.
In addition, to further propel the British social care system into an amoral backwater, the Home Secretary has implemented a rule change which will allow asylum seekers waiting over a year for processing of their applications to work in care homes in spite of the fact they have neither any relevant qualifications nor expressed the desire to do so.
This obscene rulemaking, by flick off the pen, seems ultra barbaric and reeks of the opportunistic exploitation of a disadvantaged group who will grasp at any flotation device to remain securely on British soil. Not to mention the ensuing risks to the wellbeing of vulnerable patients in care homes who will be tended to by those whose sole reason for doing the job is to avoid deportation.
The wages of these modern indentured servants will doubtless be funded by unconsenting taxpayers through further NIC rises. The plan expediently capitalises on older, weaker and marginalised people as a shameful coping strategy for failures to stem migration tides through better monitoring and turning back the boats to where they came from.
Not content with these twisted proposal for migrants to work in care homes the Home Secretary also pushed to heap fines and prison sentences on public demonstrators who voice their concerns over legislation.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill empowered law enforcement on a selective basis to punish dissenting voices who engage in noisy protests without the necessity to show criminal damage. Police state authority under the Bill includes a 51-week jail term for disruptive activities (which are quite the point of any protest) such as ‘locking on’, obstruction of public transport or resisting a search without reasonable suspicion.
By comparison to the pre-Revolutionary Government under King George III’s reign, this Government’s track record fares quite poorly. Whilst history has not been kind to the Mad King George, it is said by modern historians that he did not match the brutality of tyrants in the vein of 20th century European dictators.
It is true that his Government was fond of overtaxing and hyper regulating the American colonies, but they lived in a different era where such laws formed part of a desperate attempt to save the floundering East India Company on which the Empire’s continued flourishing depended.
Unlike today’s online censorship machine, set to expand under Ofcom’s new superpowers bestowed by the Online Safety Bill, King George III did not shut newspapers or cancel or arrest dissenting journalists. A raft of scholars today view him as unfairly maligned by 19th century revisionists.
He was even endearingly referred to as ‘Farmer George’ by many of his subjects. It was only after skirmishes broke out against the American Customs Board created to enforce the reviled Townshend Acts that he installed military forces in Massachusetts.
A look back over the last two years of Covid policies, including lockdowns, cult-like mask mandates and the ritualized abuse of children through daily testing and enforced isolation, reveals a grim picture which would have made George III and his Prime Minster Lord North, seem positively democratic in comparison. At least until the British East India Company’s property was vandalised by rebels in Boston.
Just as the Tea Act triggered rebellion one wonders how bad things will get for an uprising to happen. Could the final straw be
this recent tax hike as an attempt to plaster over the leadership’s gross mismanagement and dereliction of duty?
It is, to use a well-known battle cry, ‘Taxation without Representation’!
By Carol Kilgore
Carol is writer and activist and contributes to LIBERTATIO see her work here