Word reaches me via a North-East chief executive that a council's head of communications wants me to stop my campaign against council newspapers.

It's just the inspiration I needed to keep it going - and the Mayor of London, no less, has given me today's opportunity.

Boris Johnson, in an interview with Newsquest title the News Shopper, described local authority publications as a "very real threat to the democratic process".

He added that without independent local newspapers, the country risked entering the "dark days of partial news management".

Good on you, Boris. He's not all talk either - one of the first things he did as Mayor was to get rid of Ken Livingstone's "propaganda sheet" The Londoner which cost taxpayers £2.9m a year.

For the record, I understand that councils have to communicate with local residents.

As long as its pure, unspun information, doesn't take commercial advertising away from independent local newspapers, and is good value for taxpayers, I don't have a problem.

Funnily enough, I never set out to campaign on the issue of council publications.

I wrote one piece last year, criticising the fact that the quantity of commercial advertising in many of them undermines independent local newspapers.

A blog in response by Darlington Labour councillor Nick Wallis lit the blue touch paper and, before I knew it, I'd become a campaigner.

I know I'm a pain - but I can't stop it now, can I?