Making sense of the past seven days
The kids are back at school and the last Test is under way, so it can only mean the summer is over.

The papers have a lot to be grateful to the retail industry for, having kept the pages full over the silly season with tales of bra mountains and pullovers stranded on the high seas.

At long last, the row over Chinese imports has been resolved, after a compromise was reached allowing the release of many of the impounded goods, deducting them from next year's quotas.

But the problem of how to manage the extraordinary growth in Chinese manufacturing isn't going to go away. In the short term, retailers are going to have to deal with a flood of stock arriving into stores late and will then have to find new sources of product to compensate for the loss of some of next year's allowances.

In the longer-term, the issue for the European Union will not go away. Its members in southern Europe won't be happy while Chinese manufacturers continue to undercut them on price, while in northern Europe - where the textile industry long-since ceased to be significant - retailers will continue to be angered if the EU maintains its protectionist stance.

Let's hope EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson has learnt from this experience and next time will at least try to have a sensible dialogue with retailers before introducing such significant policies. Let's also hope he remembers the principles of free trade on which the EU was founded.

Elsewhere this week, the private equity world seems to have been put off bidding for Wyevale by the aggressive approach of rebel shareholder Laxey Partners.

The word is that Laxey had lined up TJ Hughes chairman and C&A chief Neil McCausland to chair Wyevale, before unceremoniously dumping him for property man Robert Ware.

Further evidence, if it were needed, that Laxey sees Wyevale as purely a collection of property assets. There will be many other retailers backing Wyevale chairman David Williams to see off Laxey's approach.