Ed Miliband and trusty sidekick Ed Balls picked a smashing day for their Edinburgh press conference yesterday.

"We should have done this outside," remarked one senior Scottish Labour figure, as she crammed into a lift in a west end conference centre.

"But you don't want him squinting in the sun," they were reminded, in reference to the would-be PM's uncanny talent for looking odd in photographs. The original suggestion was quickly retracted.

Journalists were passed a dossier highlighting details of SNP plans for what Labour calls 'full fiscal austerity' as Miliband, Balls and Murphy arrived for their event.

The words were emblazoned on to a giant bomb, a reference to the £7.6 billion 'bombshell' that the party says would be inflicted on Scotland if the nats have their way. It was a strange choice of imagery, one SNP insider pointed out, given the party leadership's controversial fondness for the nuclear deterrent and unfortunate habit of dropping them during their last stretch in government.

David Cameron risked the wrath of voters in Devon by confusing the Devonian and Cornish methods for eating a cream tea.

Devon tradition is to put cream on the scone, followed by jam. But the matter is fiercely contested by the Cornish, who do it the other way around.

Visiting the Taw cafe in Barnstaple, he admirably remembered that a clash existed between the counties, but then ran into bother.

"I'm going to get this wrong, aren't I?" he said, before proceeding to do just that.

Hurrah! The saga of the Green Party's Brighton billboard is almost at an end.

As regular readers will recall, the party that says it wants to run the country has faced an almighty struggle in arranging for a poster to go up.

But after two cancellations - with the party singling out the billboard contractor for blame - we hear the launch is finally set to go ahead on Monday.

Five days before the 1992 General Election took place, a horse called Party Politics was the topically named 14/1 winner of the Grand National, delighting punters.

And today, a horse called Unioniste is in the running at 25/1. A boost for the Conservative and Unionist Party, or maybe the DUP? Don't be so sure.

In French, the word means 'member of a trade union' while jockey Noel Fehily is carrying colours which might point towards the outcome of the Election - Labour red and Lib Dem yellow

A long-lost saucy seaside postcard featuring a tongue-in-cheek political joke is being reprinted for the General Election campaign.

Postcard-maker Bamforth, which was founded in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, in 1870, found the card while cataloguing the company's 45,000 images at its base in Leeds.

The postcard, which has been given approval from an unnamed MP, features a picture of a person in a toilet cubicle with the slogan: "The only member of parliament who really knows what he's doing!!"

Now, Bamforth is reprinting the image in the run-up to the election.

A spokesman for the company said: "Bamforth showed the postcard to one highly respected Member of Parliament who is standing for re-election next month and he almost cried with laughter before saying he would have it enlarged and hung in his office."

Ian Wallace, the owner of Bamforth, added: "Something like this will enable quite a few people to have a good laugh and that is not a bad thing at this stage of the General Election."