Amid the clatter of Christmas trading updates from the retailers, it is easy to miss the big picture. The general impression one gets is positive, looking back over the past fortnight; the official numbers, from the Office for National Statistics yesterday, are rather less so.
The sector divides into those that did well, those that did well enough (in that their figures were not as bad as feared) and those whose performance was plain awful.
One should always be careful about these trading updates. They do not compare like-with-like, in terms of the periods covered. As Richard Hyman, an independent consultant, points out, there is one distorting factor. In fashion, about 40 per cent of sales, he says, are taken back. They register in the