I awaken to find a note in my inbox declaring that the government is to lay out plans for dealing with Britain’s credit card disaster.

It is in many ways the least mentioned and most unaddressed financial cancer at the heart of the present financial crisis. UK resident currently owe over £230bn on their credit cards, overdrafts and credit loans.

The website uSwitch reports that over this past tumultuous year 20 per cent of all UK credit card holders had their credit limit INCREASED with out ever being consulted.

This is the equivalent of someone passing the open door of a house and seeing a fire blazing in a downstairs room chucks a can of petrol in for good measure.

At the macro level there is a chronic credit squeeze, but down at the micro, banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions are engaging in a practice that some would like to see outlawed in today’s white paper.

Fat chance. But let’s look at it. Should it not be such an offence for a finance company of whatever nature to offer, uninvited, indeed to impose uninvited, an increase in credit limits to someone already burdened with debt.

Why not declare it illegal at least for ANY credit company to extend credit limits without contacting and negotiating with the card holder?

Hats off by the way to Barclaycard who, in our collective hour of need, have slashed the minimum repayments on their card from 2.25 per cent to 1.5 per cent.

What a splendid response to current needs – but hang on a moment.. the actual cost of paying to someone who opts only to pay the minimum repayment each month back from a debt of £5,000 will rise from the previous £5,900 to £22,300.

Oh, and at 15.9 per cent APR, the repayment period will extend from 31 years to er… 96 years. I wonder what today’s White Paper will have to say about this.