How much does this out-of-date taxpayer-funded guff cost us?

Okay, we’re the first to admit that here on EAT we have a bit of a thing about economists and all those house price surveys.

But, honestly, what is the point of the Communities and Local Government house price index?

Here we are in mid-November, and CLG has just done its number-crunching – for September.

For the sake of completeness, we’d better pass on the information that house prices fell by 0.8% in September but still showed an increase of 6.1% over the year.

There’s then the usual meaningless twaddlef about mix-adjusted and seasonally-adjusted whatnots.

I am not sure how much taxpayers are paying for this (I feel a Freedom of Information request coming on), but whatever it is, it’s too much.

However, given EAT’s current obsession with fiscal retrenchment, I would like to point out that I spared you the latest Acadametrics report last Friday.

But I might as well share with you now its rather astonishing finding that in October, UK house prices rose to the highest for more than two years.

According to Acadametrics, the average price of a home in England and Wales climbed for the sixth successive month, rising 0.6% in October, and the highest rise since June 2008.

Honestly, they can’t all be right. And maybe they could all be wrong.

The sooner the Government’s chief statistician reports back on all these surveys, the better.

Only thing is, how much will THAT report cost the taxpayer?