There were 100,720 residential property transactions in July, HMRC has reported.

The “provisional seasonally adjusted” figure was 4.4% down on June’s total, but almost identical to that of July last year, at just 0.2% higher.

Really?

No.

In fact, the more sensible non-seasonally adjusted figure – ie, the actual – shows that there were 119,080 transactions in July, up from 116,270 in June, and higher than last July’s total of 110,280.

Once again, we think it’s time for the “seasonally adjusted” nonsense to shuffle off.

Can you imagine a company reporting to its shareholders that its ‘seasonally adjusted’ figures were one thing, when its actual revenue was quite another?

Or a weather forecaster telling us that due to seasonal adjustment, we all had a lovely day when in fact we’d shivered in quilted anoraks?

Beloved seasonal adjustment might be by economists, but when you get the utter nonsense of figures reported to have gone down, when in fact they’ve gone up … well, it’s time to get real.