There is a disconcerting uniformity to Britain's high streets. Where variety and independence once prospered, our principal thoroughfares now offer little more than drab homogeneity. The result is that almost all British high streets look much the same as each other.

Nestled between those familiar retail names, most of which have suffered mixed fortunes over the past ten years, are the most profitable chain stores of all - Britain's banks.

While other retailers compete to sell us everything from clothes and shoes to computers and potatoes, banks tussle with each other to sell us money.

It is an area in which they have been remarkably successful as consumers appear to have succumbed more readily to the banking sector's persuasive marketing than they have to that of say, computer sellers or clothes retailers.

Why is that? I believe it is the immediacy of what banks offer that makes their message so enticing.

Ready money - quite literally - offers all kinds of opportunities to a growing number of consumers who have forgotten how to save.

"I want it all and I want it now", has become the worrying mantra of a society whose attitude to debt has changed markedly over the past two decades.

This message was made clear by Eric Daniels, chief executive of Lloyds TSB, when he announced the bank's interim results last month.

A 20 per cent increase in bad debts during the first half of the year led him to highlight the combined problem of cheap money and consumer irresponsibility.

He said: "Twenty years ago (debt) was something that people would naturally repay. Today, advice is being given to students that the minute they graduate, they should default."

According to the Government, the number of people who made arrangements with creditors to freeze interest payments and pay off a proportion of their debts rose by 142 per cent last year. This easy alternative to bankruptcy, known as an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) is actively promoted on daytime television.

Little wonder that Lloyds TSB's bad debt figure has reached £800m, while that at HSBC has surged to £336m and hit £592m at HBOS.

Now, I'm no apologist for the banking sector, but is it really their fault that so many people find themselves in debt? I think not.

Sure, the banks' relentless marketing - geared, it has to be said, towards the live-for-today' consumer - can be seductive, but ultimately, it is the consumer who signs for the loan, or for an increase in overdraft facilities. No-one forces them to take the cash.

Of course, banks are not absolute goodie-goodies in what is a potentially messy scenario.

For example, in a sustained effort to sell us more of their product (cheap cash) it was a terrible mistake to change the earnings multiple on mortgages from 2.5 to nearer 4.5 or above.

The consequences of creeping interest rates upon borrowers who have gone out on a limb and taken advantage of these multiples to get on the property ladder may prove disastrous.

But the cavalier debtor who over-borrows to buy a must-have' car or, incredibly, a holiday, has a direct impact upon investors.

If banks have to make increasingly large provisions for bad debt, it follows that they have less money to invest in their businesses or to distribute to investors.

Banks may be Britain's most profitable retailers, but the burgeoning rise in the number of irresponsible borrowers could conceivably result in that mantle slipping before too long.

Banks would then join other high street outlets and endure a period of indifferent financial homogeneity, in keeping with their architectural surroundings.