Simon Rubinsohn Meets Swampy on the Steps of the RICS

Mark Posniak - 13 April 2012

More house price drivel has emerged, on this occasion from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which, like all the other house price index providers, is intent on stating the bleedin' obvious.

To a roll of drums in Parliament Square, heard by a few pigeons, a group of Dutch tourists, one stocky WPC and Swampy (now 45 and in middle management but down in the capital protesting for the day against something or other), the RICS revealed that 9% more surveyors reported a rise in enquiries from potential buyers than those reporting a fall.

This kind of heavyweight statistic, which actually says SFA, was followed by another: 10% more surveyors reported falling house prices in March than those reporting a rise. And guess what? This, we're told, was the least negative reading since June 2010. Really?

Having dashed back from the lake in St James Park, where he had been feeding the ducks bread that does them more harm than good (sometimes high-carb white bread can even explode inside ducks, causing instant death), Simon Rubinsohn, the learned chief economist at the RICS, announced with gravitas that:

"There has been a gentle increase in activity across the market in the early part of the year but it remains to be seen whether this can continue, given the changes in the Budget and ongoing problems affecting the economy."

When he was done, the tourists asked the stocky WPC to take a photo of them with Simon, the pigeons carried on pecking and Swampy shouted something about property being the last bastion of capitalism and that it should all be bulldozed and replaced with tents and open fires.  

But let's now deconstruct Simon's sentence. Terms like 'gentle increase', 'remains to be seen' and, 'ongoing problems affecting the economy', take are a form of linguistic hedging: they say just enough to be said but in truth say absolutely nothing. 

But if they're a chance for some good PR, let's say them anyway!