Well done to The Guardian for joining the dots here

It is, of course, possible that we're all being mugged by the retailers and supermarkets. In the absence of sufficient market competition that's actually what we'd expect in fact, for capitalists are greedy for profit. That's why we like markets. It's also possible that the retailing business has intensive competition meaning that vast pressure is being put upon those suppliers and retailers to deliver the lowest possible prices to us, the consumers. Either story is possible but it's really most unlikely that both are true. So, well done to The Guardian here:

The competition regulator is to scrutinise allegations that UK supermarkets have duped shoppers out of hundreds of millions of pounds through misleading pricing tactics.

Which? has lodged the first ever super-complaint against the grocery sector after compiling a dossier of “dodgy multi-buys, shrinking products and baffling sales offers” and sending it to the Competition and Markets Authority.

That's a version of the first story. That there's insufficient competition, we cannot take our trade elsewhere and so we're being rooked by the capitalists.

Meanwhile, new research suggests that more than 1,400 suppliers to Britain’s supermarkets are facing collapse as the cut-throat price war takes its toll on the industry.

The number of food and beverage makers in significant financial distress has nearly doubled to 1,414 in the last year, according to insolvency practitioner Begbies Traynor.

That's a version of the second story, that there's intensive competition to the benefit of us consumers. And it is entirely contradictory to the tale of the first story.

We really cannot have both happening in he same market at the same time. But according to The Guardian we do because both examples are from the same article. Without their being able to connect the dots between the two that show that one or other of the stories must be wrong.