Making sense of the past seven days
One symptom of the difficult retail climate is the number of historic names disappearing from the high street, no more so than in the department store sector. Allders has vanished from most high streets, Dickins & Jones will drop out early next year, Beatties is to be swallowed up by House of Fraser and this morning Retail Week reveals that Barkers of Kensington has also reached the end of the line.

The news is a sign of department stores' long-term decline. Readers with long memories will recall when there were three giant department stores on Kensington High Street, but Barkers will be the last to go, having been stripped gradually of both its glamour and floorspace by its owner House of Fraser over recent years.

These are difficult times for London retail. This week's British Retail Consortium figures showed a 9 per cent fall in London sales, but the West End has been even harder hit.

The good news is that retail's leaders have woken up and smelt the coffee. Waiting for Ken Livingstone - the man who went ahead with the crazy 60 per cent rise in the congestion charge, despite the impact of the bombs - to take effective action would be a big mistake, so retail's biggest names have taken matters into their own hands to organise an Oxford Street festival.

The UK's leading high street is a seedy and hostile place to shop, so this venture is not before time. Hopefully, the festival will help bring an immediate recovery from the impact the bombs have had on trade, but longer-term surgery is needed.

One panacea for London's shopping woes is the arrival of new retailers - Regent Street's Apple store is an example. So the arrival of Whole Foods Market to replace Barkers is exciting. In the US, its stores have reinvigorated in-town food shopping for the chattering classes - Kensington is the perfect place to start its assault on the UK's lentil munchers.