HOW ethical is ethical? It's a question I ask after seeing the bank which trumpets its "ethical" policies encouraging people to get into debt to meet their children's Christmas demands.

A badly-written and worse spelt list for Santa hangs in the bank's window, asking for a DVD player, binoculars, a drum kit, a computer, a television, a piano and so on, with the loan advertisement alongside it. The message isn't subtle.

As parents, we know children's letters to Santa are in-your-dreams wish lists; as children we too wrote lists we knew were highly unlikely to be realised on Christmas morning.

As parents, we also know how much we'd like Santa to bring them the dreamed-of parcel - nowadays being unable to afford it doesn't seem to be a hindrance.

Brought up in the pre-personal loan era by a generation which looked on hire purchase as the height of financial irresponsibility, there was no question of having things "on the never-never".

It did mean that ghastly child "Everybody" had what I'd have died for, but I lived to tell the tale. So, I expect, did many of you who were children in the Forties and Fifties.

However, when I read that the level of debt in this country is running at £6,800 per household, excluding the mortgage, I realise what an old fuddy-duddy I am to be horrified at the thought that borrowing to finance the Christmas shopping is expected to push that average even higher.

What is actually far more scary than that £6,800 of debt is a calculation by The MarketPlace at Bradford and Bingley that this country's borrowers waste £725m a year by failing to find the most competitive loan rates.

Ouch! £725m is 'rich beyond the dreams of liquorice,' as an elderly sub-editor of ours used to proclaim - and it's not all the consumer's fault.

A Mori poll at the weekend showed 76pc found the language of consumer credit adverts confusing and, as only 59pc knew APR stood for 'annual percentage rate', it's no wonder store cards can get away with APRs of up to 30pc.

Monday's Government White Paper sets out to improve the situation, but it shies away from capping credit rates.

It's too late for this year, but there is also an old-fashioned idea called saving up - though Minister Patricia Hewitt ignored a question on that subject on the Today programme.

You rarely see "Join our Christmas Club" notices in shop windows and that helped a lot of families to save for presents, but some supermarkets still offer savings stamps.

It takes self-discipline and at least a minimum of financial elbow room to put all your 20p pieces in a jar, or small amounts in a savings account, and not touch it until the following December.

A genuinely "ethical" bank would put posters in its window in January, offering a decent rate of interest on a savings account which had no withdrawals until the following November.

Sadly, that's not the way to make bank-sized profits