Image source, ITV

It's OK - your head is allowed to spin a bit as you size up the latest details of Thursday's TV debate. Yesterday we learned the prime minister is going to be stuck on the end in the first televised debate. Now we’ve found out the speaking order for the two-hour ITV programme – and it sees the prime minister (who is podium seven) getting in the last word. Ed Miliband gets the final go at the opening statements. The speaking orders, as with the podium orders, were chosen randomly.

Toby Forrest:

Ed Balls has been making a speech this morning outlining his party’s plan to cut business rates. He highlighted the fact that seven of the 3,500 children’s centres rolled out by New Labour are shutting this morning in Swindon, where he’s speaking. And he’s taken the fight to the Conservatives over the economy, despite today’s news about living standards rising above 2010 levels. “The choice is this: we have David Cameron and George Osborne saying ‘let’s carry on as we are, let’s stick to the plan’. They’re telling people you’ve never had it so good, just let us get on with the job... this is a government that has failed to balance the books despite their promises… if that is as good as it gets then we need change and a better future for our country.”

The Liberal Democrats change their website logo in response to Joey Essex thinking they were called Liberal 'Democats'

Image source, Liberal Democrats

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We're sure you're enjoying our rolling live coverage - but if you ever want to just get a bite-sized update, don't forget our daily at-a-glance guide to the key stories, newspaper headlines and quotes from the campaign trail. Joey Essex and claims about jobs and the NHS have been keeping us busy so far...

BBC News website reader:

Thanks for getting touch. There have been studies done into changing polling day from Thursdays but there seems little sign of it happening any time soon. It's an issue we've looked at in our FAQs (apparently one reason for Thursdays originally was to beat payday and ensure people weren't drunk).

The Independent

The dispute over spending cuts today follows comments by Alan Milburn attacking all three of the big political parties for not being open enough with voters about the true impact of the spending cuts we’re likely to see in the next parliament. In an interview with the Independent newspaper, external, the coalition’s poverty adviser said it was up to all the parties to demonstrate they have “both the competence and the plans to deliver”. He added: “Detail here may not be the politicians’ friend, but it is the voters’ friend. For both Ed Balls and George Osborne, there is an equal necessity to spell out exactly how they aim to balance the books, not just when.”

Image source, Getty Images

BBC News website reader:

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The Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Vauxhall has become the first parliamentary candidate to disclose he is HIV-positive. Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett has told BuzzFeed, external that he deliberately contracted the virus during a difficult period where he faced suicidal thoughts as a teenager and young person. He also described doing the "whole A-Z of drugs and everything in between" and accepted: "Doing that and knowingly searching for ways to get rid of yourself was the worst possible combination." His extraordinary revelations come as the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, launched his party’s mental health policy this morning.

Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb says the Conservatives are refusing to offer details about benefit cuts. “They’re planning it now, they’re just not telling us,” he tells the BBC News Channel. “This is an election where people make a big judgement about the next five years and it seems to me they have a right to know. Massive cuts from the Conservatives, massive borrowing from Labour - the Lib Dems offer a balanced approach trying to secure both a fairer society but also a stronger economy.”

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Nigel Farage is speaking on the coast at Dover for the launch of UKIP's poster on immigration. "What I'm really saying is this: if the public are to trust the politicians then before they even listen to a policy anyone even puts out on immigration there's a basic truth that has to be accepted... we cannot control immigration as members of the European Union," he says. "That gets right to the heart of what UKIP is about as a party." He sounds slightly disappointed that the weather is preventing journalists and campaigners from having a clear view of the continent across the English Channel.

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CM, Kent:

Reality Check

Image source, PA

This morning David Cameron said that in the early days of the coalition 18,000 people had waited more than a year, but that figure has now dropped to around 400.

Data from NHS England shows that in June 2010, of the 2.5 million people on NHS waiting lists, 18,000 people had indeed waited more than a year for their operation. That number has been falling steadily since the summer of 2011. By January 2015, when there were over 3 million on waiting lists, only 441 people had waited this long.

So the prime minister’s claim is correct. However, while the coalition can claim to have reduced long waits, it was under the previous Labour government that we saw the number of people waiting more than a year drop from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands.

In August 2007 – the earliest data we have – there were 4.2 million people on waiting lists, more than 575,000 of whom were waiting for more than a year.

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

Mr Osborne's hat-trick is made up of the improved GDP figures, the boost to living standards and today’s GFK consumer confidence stats, which have reached their highest level since March 2002.

Liam Gibbons:

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