Conservatives welcome a letter from over 100 company bosses backing a “Conservative-led government”
Labour publishes its own letter signed by “people from all walks of life” as it pledges a crackdown on zero hours contracts
Lib Dems discuss plans to triple paternity leave to six weeks
Ed Balls and Nick Clegg take their campaigns to Scotland
There are 36 days until the general election
Nick Clegg has spent the day talking about his proposal to triple paternity leave to six weeks. The BBC's Suzanne Lord has been at a Lib Dem event at Bishopbriggs where, she says, the assembled dads seemed very happy to hear the news.
Chancellor George Osborne is at Britvic in West Yorkshire making a speech about the Tories' favourite election subject - the economy. Britvic's chairman was one of the signatories to today's Telegraph letter. It was an "unprecedented intervention", Mr Osborne says. Not the first time we've heard him use that phrase today.
Email: politics@bbc.co.uk
Roger Holloway:
As a Senior citizen and lifelong Labour supporter, I am increasingly concerned about the ‘London-centric’ nature of our politics in terms of the issues, policies and economic focus of the main two parties. The whole out-of-date and out-of- touch nature of the Westminster political scene, entangled as it is by the Georgian pomp and ceremony of parliament and the 'out-of-reach' location in a city that the vast majority of us could not afford to live in and do not relate to. Why should we vote for any of them? Wherever the candidates come from and whatever their beliefs, they appear to be invariably swallowed up in, and corrupted by, the Westminster fog!
Daily Politics
Live on BBC Two
Labour and the Conservatives are vying to win the business vote in the opening days of the election campaign. Daily Politics reporter Adam Fleming took the mood box - an unscientific test with a box and balls - to see which of Westminster's two biggest parties were best trusted by voters in London's Regent Street to run the economy. See how the balls fall in his film
Image source, bbcYouGov
Peter Kellner explains what happened during the 1997 and 2010 campaigns, external.
Image source, YouGov
Image source, PAShadow chancellor Ed Balls has denied he intends to lower the point at which taxpayers pay the 40p rate of income tax. He told ITV this morning that he would like to “find ways” to have “fewer people in the 40% tax bracket”, but said "I have to be honest with people. The deficit will be £90billion.I have to find a way to get the deficit down in a careful, staged, balanced way."
That led to a suggestion he was leaving the door open to lowering the amount people could earn before paying the higher rate. He was asked about it at his Q&A this afternoon:
Quote Message"I have no intention of reducing the threshold. I would like to see the threshold go up if we can afford that but I'm not going to make, unlike David Cameron, promises where I can't show where the money will come from."
Ed Balls, Labour
The Daily Telegraph
Quote MessageA female James Bond? Ed Miliband wants to kill popular entertainment... Ed Miliband's call for a female James Bond suggests a world in which our cultural entertainment is reduced to a cast of inoffensive characters and equal opportunity set-pieces.
Andrew Neil
Daily and Sunday Politics
Andrew Neil's looks at the campaign issues, where he attends the UKIP press conference and asks about immigration figures. The Daily Politics presenter is making a daily film through the election campaign on what key figures are up to, and looks at the political headlines of the day. Watch his Wednesday report
Daily Politics
Live on BBC Two
Politicians may be known for kissing babies but David Cameron has been talking about a rat, Ed Miliband was asked about James Bond, and Nick Clegg posed with a hedgehog. Ellie Price looked at why Westminster was relatively empty while key figures were talking about strange issues, and taking part in interviews and conferences around the country in this Daily Politics film
Image source, Getty ImagesEd Miliband started the week by warning David Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum was a “clear and present danger” to businesses. The People’s Pledge, which is campaigning for an in-out referendum on the EU, isn’t very impressed. According to Mr Miliband, giving us all a vote on the EU's significant role in how we are governed would be ‘playing political games’, it said in an email to supporters. “Yet citing the alleged consequences of Britain leaving the EU to deny us an EU referendum seems little different in principle to citing one potential outcome of an election to justify cancelling it. It's a view that reveals an alarming attitude to democracy.” It wants its 132,000 backers to press their Labour candidates with some awkward questions, external.
Email: politics@bbc.co.uk
Jim Clark:
I have a letter signed by 200 doctors saying the Tories 'top down ' reorganization of the NHS has been a disaster. The Telegraph say they will not print it. Are they still referred to as the Daily Torygraph?
Email: politics@bbc.co.uk
Eddie Eldridge:
If zero-hours contracts are so bad according to Labour, why do so many Labour councils and MPs use them ?
@NadineDorriesMP
Quote MessageLovely messages of goodwill from people on the street. Really puts the wind under your candidate wings when people are so lovely !
Now seems like as good a moment as any to sum up where we are with the biggest stories on day three of the general election campaign:
Email: politics@bbc.co.uk
David:
I am a lifelong Tory voter however I think credit should be given to Nick Clegg and his colleagues for the brave decision taken 5 years ago and for seeing it through.
@JasonGroves1
Quote MessageDanny Alexander raging at @edballsmp for refusing 3-way 'Chancellors' debate': 'He shd man up, turn up + speak up. What is he frightened of?"
Quote MessageWe feel that we have been very badly dealt with by the broadcasters. I watch evening after evening as they give coverage to parties which will have less of a say after an election than we will have. Three of the parties in the seven leaders' debate are smaller parties than we will be before, during and after an election and I just cannot see how the discrimination against this party and Northern Ireland can be justified.
Peter Robinson, Democratic Unionist Party leader
@BBCNews
Quote Message@theJeremyVine answers your #GE2015 Q's in Twitter Q&A at 1430 BST Use #AskBBCVine or http://bbc.in/19D75PS
Ed Balls moves on to attack the SNP. “The biggest lie in this general election campaign is the SNP are the anti-austerity party when the truth is the SNP are the extend austerity party,” he says, to applause. “The only way to end Tory austerity in Scotland is to vote Labour at the next general election.” The choice he’s presenting to voters north of the border is “extreme austerity” under George Osborne, “extended austerity” under the SNP or the Labour alternative. And that is virtually it - the audience rises to its feet to applaud and the snappers close in, as pictured above.