AFTER the week he's had, the last thing Jim Murphy needed was an embarrassing photo to sum up his confused position over spending cuts.

It was something he narrowly avoided yesterday, when he prepared for TV interviews during a campaign event at a nursery in Cumbernauld - alongside a toy abacus and a child's calculator.

But Mr Murphy, who has been in the game a while, spotted the danger at the last minute. "Is this a set up?" he joked, as the unwelcome props were quickly jettisoned.

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Reports come in of the Greens manifesto launch and a dearth of er, manifestos, in an attempt to be more environmentally friendly one presumes.

There was also a lack of microphones meaning that television viewers at home, and indeed many others, could not hear the tough questions from journalists being put to the party leaders.

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Do the Liberal Democrats have the most accident-prone battle bus in politics?

Last week, it managed to squash an innocent pigeon that clearly did not see the bright yellow juggernaut coming as it wound its way through the streets of Dorset.

And yesterday, an electrical fault left it stranded on the streets of London as a result of an electrical fault, leaving passengers to abandon it for the Tube.

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Who says the SNP is only interested in independence?

Eilidh Whiteford, candidate in Banff and Buchan, is campaigning on an issue that is closer to voters' hearts in Aberdeenshire, where separation was rejected by a margin of two to one.

She is highlighting the state of a phone box in the village of Pennan, made famous by the 1983 movie Local Hero.

"One of the biggest stars of the film is the red telephone box," she said. "It was therefore very disappointing to see it in the condition it was in, badly in need of a spruce-up and with the door propped-up against the wall having come off its hinges."