I’d really like a £180K sports car but I couldn’t attempt the monthly repayments, so I shall have to cut my cloth. Perhaps I’ll buy a cheap second had motor, or maybe just hire a vehicle when I feel like going on  a trip. Imagine the following scenario… A bloke on £22K pa gets ideas above his station and signs up to buy that  Lamborghini. He pays the first instalment but then defaults permanently. Should we expect the dealer to say, “No probs – I’ll just reduce the monthly payments to next-to-nothing. Keep the smart motor, mate!”

Well, of course not.

But this is effectually what has happened in the mortgage market. In 2008 it became clear that mortgage lenders were being irresponsible on an industrial scale, lending purchasers as much as eight to ten times their annual salary. Result: house price crash as part of the general economic slump. What to do about this emergency? The government did something similar to the crazy Lamborghini salesman and reduced interest rates to next to nothing so that irresponsible borrowers could afford their recently-acquired houses.

This had a catastrophic effect on the income and long term financial prospects of savers, especially pensioners and others on low incomes. Thus the profligate were rewarded at the expense of the prudent.

Today we learn that the Financial Conduct Authority is to make new rules concerning mortgage applications and lenders will have to take into more realistic account the income and outgoings of prospective borrowers. Naturally, this has been greeted with squeals of outrage. But irresponsible borrowers don’t need to worry: the scheme will prove unworkable as lenders will find a way to continue lending – because, in most cases, it is in their interests to do so.

So injustice is institutionalised and excessive usuriousness celebrated. I call to mind some words of C.H. Sisson:

“What Ezra Pound exposed in The Cantos is the monstrous aberration of a world in which reality is distorted, down to a degree never so comprehensively indicated before, by the pull of a fictitious money. It is a noble subject and may be the only possible one for a long poem in our age.” 

Today Tony Blair says that extreme Islamism “distorts and warps Islam’s true message and it is spreading across the world. It is destabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively.”

It is a bit late in the day to issue such a warning. Ten years ago , Professor Marcello Pera, former President of the Italian Senate, said that it is this extremist insurgency which has declared, preached, promised and repeated many times its intention to fight a holy war against the West. And in a more recent lecture Relativism, Christianity and the West Professor Pera, said,

“Is there a war? I answer, yes there is a war and I believe the responsible thing is to recognise it and to say so, regardless of whether the politically-correct thing to do is to keep our mouths shut.

“In Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ossetia, the Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Morocco and much of the Islamic and Arab world, large groups of fundamentalists, radicals, extremists – the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brothers, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Armed Group and many more have declared a holy war on the West. This is not my imagination. It is a message they have proclaimed, written, preached, communicated and circulated in black and white. Why should I not take note of it?”

But Mr Blair is mistaken when he says that extreme Islamism is a warped form of Islam. From the start the prophet Mahomet urged Muslimisation of the world at the point of the sword. Many times in the past – thank God – Christians rose up to defend the faith against militant Islam: At Tours, Charles Martel saved northern Europe from Muslim conquest and Don John of Austria and the papal states triumphed at Lepanto. Three hundred years ago Muslim armies were at the gates of Vienna where they were resisted and finally turned back by Christian forces. We must pray and so nerve ourselves that such courage will not be found wanting in us to repel the threats we are facing today.

Those with their eyes open have understood the true nature of the Muslim ideology all along, As long ago as 1831 Samuel Coleridge – a man with his eyes wide open if ever there was one – said:

“That erection of a temporal monarch under the pretence of a spiritual authority was effected in full by Mahomet to the establishment of the most extensive and complete despotism that ever warred against civilisation and the interests of humanity.”

That’s why I used the phrase “Muslim ideology.” As Coleridge pointed out, its supposed “spiritual authority” is “a pretence.”

But Mr Blair is to be commended for recognising at least part of the danger, even when he falls over backwards to be nice to the encroaching barbarism. He is right too to notice that we seem “powerless” to counter the threat – though “unwilling” would be a more accurate description and account for our torpor in the face of extinction.  Unfortunately, the West is unlikely to take any notice and, as Marcello Pera conjectures, the destiny of our civilisation will be to die from political-correctness.