National Insurance: A guide through confusion

Do you actually know what National Insurance is? Can you protect yourself from being tricked by this taxes arcane rules? A tax about pension whose history gets mixed up with health provision. Given how crazily complicated tax is, there is no surprise for decades that governments, both left and right, have been pulling the wool over your eyes. Note that the proportion of NI paid is weighted heavily at lower pay bands and kicks in before income tax.