I am getting fed up with the misuse of the word “democracy.”

Last week all the papers screamed that the atrocity in Westminster was “an attack on our democracy.” This week the same papers are screaming that Mrs May’s signing of the letter to tell the EU that we’re leaving was “the reclaiming of our democracy.”

Democracy – demos, the people and cracy, rule – implies that voters have genuine choices. But this is not so, and that’s why the word is being misused. Of course, we have all these party labels: Con, Lab, Lib and Loony, but they all implement the same policies. And these policies all add up to socialism. We are forever being told by the politicians and the media (and especially our intellectually-challenged bishops) that we live under a capitalist system, but this is very far from the truth.

Nearly 50% of Britain’s GDP goes to the public sector. In so called communist China it is only 17%. At the height of their totalitarian tyranny, the Soviets were only spending 10% more than we do today. Never mind the anti-capitalist rhetoric, examine the facts…

You are taxed on your wages. Then you pay 20% VAT on nearly everything you buy with the money on which you have already been taxed.

Scandalously we are taxed even on our meagre pensions.

Fuel taxes are at an outrageously high level. If we have a car we pay road tax. If we drink or smoke, the price of our pints and fags is artificially inflated by taxation. Governments ask people to save, so to reduce the burden of taxation. But the prudent who do save are paid little or no interest. In fact, with rates as they are, savers – especially among the older generation – are actually losing money by their thrift. If we do save, we are taxed again on the minuscule interest

If we do our bit by buying shares in British companies, we are taxed on our dividends. There are further taxes on share dealing. The state broadcasting propaganda department fiercely polices an annual tax called the TV licence. The industrial, commercial, financial and manufacturing companies which generate income for the country pay large sums in Corporation Tax and other business taxes. And, in the form of Inheritance Tax, we have to pay up again even when we’re dead. British businesses which ought to be leading our economic recovery are prevented by labyrinthine corporate and state regulation.

Is this what the bishops condemn as “capitalism”? These levels of taxation and regulation are combining to hinder economic recovery. And such taxes are required only because the government needs them to pay for its massively expanded army of civil servants, its quango mountain, its legions of useless box-tickers, its lousy education system, the failing and disgracefully corrupt NHS, and its bloated state welfarism. Then there are the bishops’ hysterical protests against “the cuts.” The truth is that this government will be borrowing and spending more when it leaves office than it did when it came in. Whatever economic and social system is currently being operated in our country, it is not by any shadow of meaning capitalist.

It is socialism through and through. And it’s what you’ll get whichever way you vote – for our prized “democracy” is a lie and a sham