The delicate art of Boris-bashing

Have Boris Johnson's foes concluded that you can't beat The Blond with a nasty big stick? As the capital returned to work on Monday, London Labour kicked off its election campaign with an assault on the Mayor's public transport fare increases distinguished by its precision targeting. Unlike the mayoral contest of 2008 there were no personal attacks or allegations of ugly extremism. Instead, London MPs Harriet Harman in the Standard and Karen Buck at Comment is Free stuck primarily to criticism of Boris's decision to hit low-paid bus-users hardest and reminders of other transport moves that are costing cash-strapped Transport for London. Some of the arguments were dubious - the party doesn't really know how much money would be raised by a £25 super-congestion charge for gas-guzzlers - and Boris's expanded half-price concessions package wasn't mentioned. Such is the noble game we're in. But the general strategy seems sound . Far better, I reckon, to concentrate on biffing Boris's policy choices than trying to denounce him as a beast or a buffoon, which only plays to his strengths as a celebrity - the public doesn't find him horrid and likes it when he's daft. The Green Party's Darren Johnson AM did a similar job on him in the very different context of yesterday's budget committee meeting , which put the Mayor and his spending plans - well, saving plans, largely - under scrutiny. Instead of ostentatiously freezing the mayoral precept - the GLA Group portion of the council tax - which will help Londoners very little, why hadn't he raised it a bit instead and used the takings to keep those bus fares as low as possible? The Mayor's non-answer betrayed where his priorities lie. It is these that his opponents must expose. Snow coverage It made a Clapton shopper nostalgic and a Barnet blogger happy . It also brought forth a mayoral demand for more grit. Looks like the snow will be with us for a few days yet . Still, the penguins won't complain . Before his time, and after I'd like to have been the first to observe that that it's 350 years since Samuel Pepys started writing his famous diaries, but I'm afraid the Wellcome Library beat me to it: On a day when new diaries are opened and entries for the year ahead begun, it's fitting to post about one of the most famous diarists of all time. Samuel Pepys's diary is popularly remembered for its clear evocations of the major events of the 1660s: of the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667. But Pepys was as much a diarist of the everyday and the personal, and it's his self-examination that is - for the seventeenth century - so radical and new. As the piece points you, can now read the diaries online and even follow them on Twitter . Thus has Pepys become a sort of micro-blogger from beyond the grave. London blogosphere In a former blog-life I was often engaged in online debate by a woman who called herself "angelneptunestar". Unlike other Boris-worshippers - such as the kind of charmless know-nothings who waste valuable comment thread space at Cif - she was funny, friendly and quite charmingly besotted with her hero. She still drops in on me from time time, most recently to announce the birth of Cyberboris . The Mayor has " an outstanding brain ," it says. He is " prodigiously talented and born for the world stage ." In case you didn't already know. Coming Up On Wednesday the top brass of the London Development Agency will take a bunch of tough questions from the Assembly. First on the list will be from the Conservatives's (and Hackney's) admirably independent Andrew Boff : "What difference would Londoners notice if the LDA did not exist?" Today sees the opening of Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll, biopic of that enthralling star of the London punk scene, Ian Dury. Find out more about it here and here . And keep in touch .