IMAGINE someone turning up to a job interview scruffily dressed, clutching a CV with alarming blanks and dodging questions about how he or she would do the job.

This is the image that springs to mind when considering the damning verdicts on the parties’ economic plans delivered today by the experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Never mind how often you hear politicians say “we’ve been absolutely clear….”, what is clear is that voters are still in the dark about what’s coming.

Consider the Tories. They have failed to say where they will find £10bn of planned welfare cuts, or a whopping £30bn swipe earmarked for local councils, social care, policing and justice.

And Labour? Well, they have given some detail about cuts, but fail to tell us when they plan to clear the deficit – so they may make big cuts, or they may not? And what happens to debt?

The Liberal Democrats have been more candid – could they be less so? – but are rapped for wild optimism about funds raised from our old friends tax avoidance and evasion.

Of course, if you were quizzing this scruffy job applicant, you would send him or her packing – but the election is in two weeks and you’ve got to pick from what’s available.

Perhaps console yourself that, for all the blanks, the candidates offer genuinely different CVs – the starkest choice since 1992?

One last IFS observation. For all the hysterical talk of the SNP pulling Labour’s strings with dangerous spending, their plans are “broadly consistent”.

Never mind the muddle on tax-and-spend, at least we know where the party leaders stand on…who should be the next James Bond!

Recently, Ed Miliband chose the super-spy to make a stand for feminism, arguing for former Bond girl Rosamund Pike to fill his shoes.

Now David Cameron has picked his dream 007 - and it’s the, er, unlikely figure of William Hague, the former Foreign Secretary and retiring Richmond MP.

“He's fit, he's healthy, he does Yoga, he can probably crack a man's skull between his knee caps….so I'd go for William Hague,” the prime minister said.

Nick Clegg’s campaign tour often resembles summer holidays with my daughters – he’s done Go Ape, ten-pin bowling, fed some cute seals.

But George Osborne is also having a ball, enthusing “I've changed the oil on a car, I've made a pizza, I've welded some steel together, I’ve packed beer bottles in a brewery…”

So much more fun than holding press conferences, or meeting voters!

Joke of the Day: UKIP’s Patrick O'Flynn on whether St George would be welcome in a UKIP-ruled Britain as a skilled migrant: “Well, I guess dragon-slaying is a skill.”

Stunt of the Day: Labour’s Ed Balls quacking like Donald Duck to impress babies at a drop-in centre…one “broke into a little cry”.