Today is Bias Freedom Day

There's a concept called 'Tax Freedom Day', which is the theoretical calendar date at which you've earned enough in a year to cover your annual taxes, and thus for the rest of the year whatever you earn goes into your own pocket. Well, perhaps this is the day in the election campaign that should be dubbed 'Bias Freedom Day', as at 10pm tonight the obscene bonus coverage for the three London-based parties in this campaign - over-and-above the disproportionate coverage they usually receive anyway - will finally come to an end. Will the remaining week of relative normality help the SNP to right the wrong that's been done both to them, and to the Scottish public who've been deprived thus far of the chance to properly consider the full range of choices before them? Let's hope so, although Angus Robertson summed up the problem better than anyone so far on Newsnight Scotland last night - "when we speak to people on the doorstep, they often tell us they're waiting for the final debate to make up their minds how they're going to vote". If the SNP and Plaid Cymru aren't even allowed twenty seconds of exposure on the main forum which the voters are using to inform their choices, how can this election possibly be regarded as free and fair?

*

It doesn't exactly inspire huge confidence that this weekend's Scottish and Welsh "leaders'" debates are being regarded as anything other than tokenistic by the broadcasters when the backdrop to tonight's showdown appears to be the words 'THE FINAL DEBATE' in huge capital letters.

*

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw 'Chris g00', one of Political Betting's resident Jockophobes, 'satirically' suggesting that an English court should be asked to block Alex Salmond's "throw them a bone" appearance on Question Time this evening. Yep, a programme in which the three London-based parties have mere parity with the SNP really is discriminatory beyond belief, isn't it?