Sometimes you can add up everything and get nothing. Government statisticians have just done it by declaring that all the UK’s assets – houses, roads and TVs and investments – are worth £6,954bn. It is the ultimate in consolidated accounts but the concept is surely as spurious as the accuracy.

For what it is worth – and that is not a lot – the total is £177bn less than last time the Office of National Statistics wasted its time calculating Britain’s net value a year ago. And as housing accounts for more than half our wealth and the statisticians reckon property values have fallen only 9 per cent, the fall is probably much greater than that.

This looks like the sort of exercise that you give the new boy in the office as a joke or to the work-experience girls (or interns as we now call them instead of paying them) rather than allow them to do anything important.

And it highlights the different between economists and accountants. The statisticians, like accountants, have added up everything with a ridiculous precision without regard to the conclusion: the economists would have decided the answer first and worked backwards.

But the stats chaps have taken it so seriously they can tell us we own £52bn of sewage and sanitation assets and £17bn of motor vehicles. Depreciation of the nation’s assets last year was £151bn (don’t ask me which method they use, check the ONS website) but was exceeded by new investment.

So that’s it: UK Holdings plc is worth nearly £7bn net of debt and if we all own one share in this organisation that is £115,000 each.

But value exists only if it can be realised. Not only can we not have our £115,000 and emigrate, how does the government value even the tangible assets like houses? (Did I mention that the UK has £52bn of intangible assets?) You can put one house on the market to test its value; you can assess the market from the 5 per cent of housing stock that changes hands each year. But if all the nation’s homes were offered for sale, who would buy them?

Perhaps publishing Britain’s balance sheet will invite a bid for the country from abroad. Surely some sovereign wealth fund could afford a nice little island off Europe; an oil-rich nation might like somewhere with a temperate climate and space to dump its rubbish. Pity about the 60m people: there may have to be some evictions and redundancies.

But maybe the credit rating agencies won’t downgrade our AAA rating now they know we have so much in net assets.

Oscar Wilde’s comment about cynics should be applied to the chief statistician - “A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

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