However, what's particularly irritating about The Times piece. Sorry, scratch that, the whole thing is particularly irritating. What really, really grates though is the wilful misrepresentation of the facts. Take this line: "Yet there is little to suggest that British lorries are much better. Both had shocking breaches in safety. In the latter period, 33.1 per cent of foreign lorries and 28.6 per cent of British lorries had faults serious enough for them to be banned from the road."

Those stats are taken straight from the Select Committee's report. Yet in the very next paragraph the Committee adds: "The consensus among witnesses was that the trend towards increasing prohibition rates, observed over the last three years, represented an improvement in VOSA's targeting techniques, rather than a decrease in vehicle compliance standards generally". So far from British trucks getting worse, as Ross Clark argues, it's more that VOSA is stopping the operators that are most likely to be breaking the law, hence the higher percentage of prohibitions.

His argument on taxation is also a little misleading, In a report by the same committee, published in July this year (and referenced in its VOSA report, natch) it says, in a section on road freight, that calculating whether the transport industry pays its way are enormously difficult. The FTA argues that it does, the left-leaning Campaign for Better Transport says it pays, at best, 61% of its external costs, and Prof McKinnon says "calculations of this type are clearly sensitive to the assumptions made and the monetary values attached to imponderables such as the health effects of pollution, climate change and the value of time". In fact he argues that if you exclude congestion from the calculations that "HGVs would more than cover the infrastructure and environmental costs (with a 12% surplus)".

And then there's his mention of rail at the bottom of the piece. If there's one thing that torpedoes all his other arguments and shows that, at best, he has a tenuous understanding of the realities of freight transport, then it's this ridiculous attachment to the railways. "Why" he asks "aren't we carrying more freight by rail and waterway?"

Where to start? You mean besides the fact that they're expensive, difficult to run efficiently and there's precious little space on the railways? Some operators have made it work, sure, but like it or not, without massive government investment (which isn't going to happen) and a step-change in the way the railways are run, then road will remain the dominant mode.

Some more thoughts on rail freight here.