Vehicle tax holiday | Sunderland sidelined | Clockwork orange timer | Heartwarming column | Buy British and dump Palantir

Why is the government giving heavy goods vehicles a free ride for a year, with its “12-month vehicle tax holiday” (Report 20 May), when they cause such huge road damage to our crumbling road system (The pothole puzzle: the bumpy ride to fixing Britain’s broken roads, 23 May)? A 44-tonne HGV, the industry standard, is 100,000 times more damaging to road surfaces than a Ford Focus.
Philippa Edmunds
East Twickenham, London

• Within five years, Sunderland have moved from League One to seventh place in the Premier League with a place in Europe; they got two columns in Monday’s paper. West Ham got three pages, Manchester City two, and Liverpool and Arsenal one each. Manchester United got three columns, and Tottenham got eight. Speaking as a Wearsider, this looks like a bit of big-boy bias.
Bob Powley
Leeds