ONCE again the media has reported a rise in high street sales and property prices in a way that may give a false impression of reality.

High streets are buzzing because of Christmas and the sales and many retailers discounted prices very heavily in a way that cannot other than destroy margins.

Selling things is one thing, but selling them profitably quite another.

We shall just have to wait and see the trading reports this month to see who has been damaged and by how much.

Opinion formers would have us believe that the small reduction in interest rates has re-ignited the housing market.

As usual the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (hardly a dispassionate observer) reports in ebullient terms about the revival of the market.

Meanwhile the banks and building societies (another group with vested interests) report record mortgage lending and the media of course duly repeat this as further evidence of the housing revival.

I believe there might be another explanation. Perhaps people are re-mortgaging in order to extract equity from the grossly inflated value of their homes to fund current consumption and so maintain their standard of living in the face of declining real incomes and taxes and fuel costs that have increased significantly.

If this is so then the figures are a sign of personal financial distress rather than renewed confidence.

The growing numbers of redundancy, personal bankruptcies and house repossessions show no sign of slowing, which would suggest that the latter interpretation might be the more accurate of the two.

KEVIN HEY, Castle Road, Colne.