YOU don't need to be a boffin to know that there's a health risk in the diesel fumes from those jolly buses that nice John Prescott wants to force us all on to and from the lorries still thundering through our towns because the government now also says relief roads are a no-no on environmental grounds.

You only have to see the clouds of black filth spewed out by these dirty, noisy and smelly vehicles to realise that - or, worse, get a lungful of it. Yet, it is hardly any time at all since the eco-freaks and scientists were telling us that it was emissions from petrol engines that were the big environmental threat - so much so that the government deliberately made supposedly clean 'n' green diesel more attractive economically and, as a result, lots more diesel-driven vehicles took to the road to pump out still more of the officially-preferred fumes. Now, as Britain is gripped by an asthma epidemic, scientists tell us this week that they have found evidence showing that diesel exhausts are likely to be much more harmful than other fuel emissions and that diesel fumes can have a devastating effect on health.

As I say, I would have thought that was obvious to anyone who has ever breathed a whiff of diesel exhaust that it is a lot dirtier than that from petrol.

It just shows it's daft to trust the experts, particularly those who - like the Transport Minister, chauffeur-driven Mr Prescott and the car-hating cranks running our councils - have swallowed the environmentalists' and health fascists' handbooks.

But now that scientists say the petrol that millions of motorists are paying through the nose for is the safer stuff, can we expect the government to do an about-turn and ease up on the daylight robbery of the 80 per cent tax on it and make the greener fuel cheaper?

Don't hold your breath while waiting.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.