Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY

Image of the week: The coalition hits the factory floor

The event dubbed “Rose Garden 2” – a renewing of vows between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats after an electoral drubbing and the UK’s slide back into recession – actually took place in a tractor factory in Essex.

On the left, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg answers a question from the assembled workers, while prime minister David Cameron adopts a Stan Laurel-style head-scratching pose. Inevitably, the double act’s ties matched their party-political colours. Photograph: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett

Getting to know... Julian Dunkerton

ONE MONTH AFTER his retail company admitted it had made “arithmetic errors” in its forecasts, Julian Dunkerton, chief executive of SuperGroup, is trying to shake off the ignominy of getting his sums wrong. The company’s brand is “strong and healthy and alive”, he claims.

The brand in question is Superdry, a fashion label that is riding the crest of the casual-wear wave it helped to create – it’s selling a lot of hoodies and tracksuits, in other words, with sales up 14 per cent to £75 million inthe latest quarter. Dunkerton, who started out on a market stall, says the company is now investing for future growth. SuperGroup is some way off turning into a rags-to-riches-to-rags story, but analysts remain unimpressed.

The lexicon: Automaticity

“IT’S CALLED automaticity, which is a great Euro-bureaucratic word, but what it means is that the sanctions are automatic so that the big countries don’t flout the rules,” explained Lucinda Creighton TD, Minister of State with responsibility for Europe, on Tonight with Vincent Browne.

“Automaticity”, once translated from technocrat-speak, in this context means that fines issued to countries for breaking Europe’s fiscal stability rules will require the authorisation of the European Council to be overturned. The European Central Bank wanted even more automaticity and regards the proposed system of fiscal discipline as “semi-automaticity”.

In numbers: Chinese trade disappoints

4.9

The percentage growth in exports from China in the year to April. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast growth of 8.5 per cent. The finger was pointed at the euro zone crisis

0.3

The percentage growth of imports into China year-on-year, according to government data. Economists had forecast, ahem, 10.9 per cent

$18.4 billion

China’s trade surplus in April, almost double the average estimate of $9.9 billion, as a result of the “worrying” sluggishness in imports