Shopkeepers in London suffered their worst January for five years...?

No, it was almost certainly their best January ever - sales rose 3.5% from 2009. Furthermore:

London fared better than the rest of the UK where sales fell 0.7 per cent in January in the worst performance for 15 years.

See below...

Worst or best?

So is the headline on this BBC piece.

Have a guess if that's true or not? That's right, it's not. In fact shop sales were the best since records began.

The article itself is more accurate, it's the 'worst growth' for 15 years. But let's put this into perspective, the rate of growth was 1.2% (like-for-like was a fall of 0.9%, but that's irrelevant in a macro sense). I don't have the figures to hand, but if GDP in January (which would have to be estimated) was 1.2% higher than in January 2009 it would be a pretty good result. And in a recession partly caused by overstretched household budgets!!

No, UK production has shrunk the most in 40 years

Sigh, yet another example of this common error.

Retail sales at lowest level since early 2006

Here's a classic press error which is not in the original Press Association story, so might be the Independent's fault. Retail sales are NOT at their 'lowest level since early 2006'. The rate of growth has fallen to its lowest level since 2006. In fact retail sales in September were 140.4, compared to a peak monthly level (on a seasonally adjusted basis) of 133.3 in 2006. That means they were 5.3% higher than the highest point in 2006.