The profitability of non-financial companies in Britain edged slightly higher in the first three months of this year, running counter to claims that “greedflation” is fuelling price rises.

Official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that companies made a net return of 9.9 per cent on production in the first quarter, up from 9.8 per cent in the final quarter of last year.

Profitability is lower than its pre-pandemic level. In the three months to December 2019, UK non-finance firms made net returns of 10.3 per cent.

The ONS numbers are here. Yes, they are broken out into manufacturing, services, oil and gas offshore and so on. No, there is no empirical support for the idea that increases in corporate profits drove inflation. On the basic grounds that corporate profits did not rise by the amount necessary to be driving inflation.

So, that idea’s dead then. Well, OK, that idea’s dead in a rational reality but clearly not in politics.

Which leads to two further issues. One is, clearly, we should not be using politics as a way to run the world. Because politics has been infested with the idea - the untrue one, the one that just is not, you know, true - that it is profit margins which have been causing the recent inflation. A system that can end up so misinformed about reality is not a useful manner of making decisions about reality now, is it? We’ll just have to return to markets then given the corruption of the information flow into political decision making.

The other one is much more fun. Which is that those who were pushing this idea, so, how do we get to punish them? Misinformation, disinformation, after all these are the modern crimes, right? Deliberately lying to the body politic should carry some punishment?

Even if it’s only not believing a word these people ever say again. Sadly, that then runs into another problem. Other than those working in politics who ever has believed the comment pages in The Guardian?