IT was awfully kind of BBC Radio to provide us with a detailed history of the unused fund that was established by philanthropists in 1928 to pay off the UK National Debt (now worth in excess of £400 million) and which is about to help alleviate what has since grown into a £1.8 trillion deficit, but they seem to have forgotten to inform their listeners how the National Debt first came about.

I wonder if we should remind them that, in 1694, King William III (1650-1702) – the former Prince of Orange – borrowed money from a Jewish syndicate to finance his campaign in the Nine Years’ War. Despite the fact that usury had been declared illegal by the Magna Carta of 1215, a ban that was later reinforced by King James I of England (1566-1625), William’s new spate of borrowing in the late seventeenth century led to the foundation of the infamous Charter of the Bank of England. The lenders were mostly Jews who had taken Spanish names, including Da Costa, Fonseca, Mendes, Nunes, Henriquez, Rodrigues, Salvador, De Mattos and De Medina.

Although the inappropriately-titled Bank of England was a private business, it had acquired the power of a state-within-a-state. A Jewish financier by the name of Francisco Suasso (also known as Abraham Israel Suasso) had even helped William III conquer England itself. The rest, as they say (and despite typical BBC amnesia), is history.