YOU readers have a massive advantage over me for once. By the time you see my column on Friday, you should know the General Election result.

I, on the other hand, had to write this as the Free Press went to press yesterday and obviously had no clue who won.

I know who lost though and that's the British public after the worst election I can remember.

Politicians nowadays are so bland and lacking in passion. Like many others, I didn't have a clue who to vote for because, in the words of Mrs Mann, "they are all as rotten as one another".

But what really got my goat was the blatant bias shown by newspapers.

The Bucks Free Press is an honourable exception. This paper has a strict policy of being impartial, and it went about trying to give each candidate the same fair and equal opportunity to have their say.

There was no attempt to put any spin on their policies. This paper, as far as I could see, just presented the facts as best as it could and let the voters make up their own minds.

That, of course, is the responsible way to do it in a mature society where the electorate are seen as adults who do not need to be told who to vote for by an hysterical leader writer.

Sadly, several national papers couldn't resist thumping the drum for Tony Blair and attacking William Hague.

Now, I have no particular love for Hague, and I thought some of his statements were quite wallyish. But I did feel sorry for him because he and his party were rarely given a fair crack of the whip by most of the print media.

I have no idea whether this coverage influenced the result or not, but it gave Blair a massive advantage.

That surely isn't a good thing in a democracy during a vital election.

But it's not good either to restrain free speech in a democracy, so it would be wrong to ban the papers from taking sides. In other words, this bias is the price we all pay in exchange for living in a free country.

People often ask me why I don't work for the nationals.

Mrs Mann says it's because I've got no talent, but it's episodes like this that confirm to me that local newspapers are indeed the true bastions of democracy.