Recently in Editor's rant Category

Now you expect it from the Daily Mail but not the Torygraph.There again perhaps it is a sign of the times but on Tuesday the Telegraph published  5 ways to...Save money on your eye care.

Cue the top 40 hit parade music.

Coming in at number one  is get a free or cheap eye test.

Number two is get a takeaway prescription. The Telepgraphs tells its readers that by law an optician has to provide a prescription and this will enable a third party to make your lenses without measuring your eyes. Make sure you can read it though becuase you might have to input the data yourself.

Number three..cheap glasses sites. You can buy glasses online for as little as £4.99, Tesco do it for £10 for designer frames go to BudgetSpex or Next. Cue plug for Glasses Direct

Number four is cheap contact lenses. The article says 30 pairs of Focus Dailies All day Comfort will cost you £18 at Boots but from Getlenses it's £8.46.

Number five is cheap laser surgery. Optimax sells left over capacity on ebay and you can use Tesco Clubcard points, you can also go for cashback or phone around for last minute cancellations --nice one, not 'arf.

I wonder if Rodenstock will be so keen to use the Telegraph for its full page ads and Wimbledon campaigns in the future?

And the author of this piece,Rosie Murray-West. Sounds eerily close to Murray-Wells doesn't it.

Its one thing to talk about Tesco's free eye test offer and £10 specs but quite another to see the adevrtisement on page 6 of the Daily Telegraph.

There is an interesting parallel with politicians and the General Election. The really big issues seem to be the ones that are being ignored.

For optics it is frozen voucher values and Tesco free eye tests that are the two issues ordinary optometrists and DO want to talk about. But it is exactly those issues that the optical bodies are keeping quiet on. 

I will have to be very careful with future posts given the fate suffered by Rod Liddle after his outspoken Spectator blog.

As a journalist I am clearly aware of the need to be accurate and impartial in everything  I write, but also as a journalist I still can't bring myself to think of a blog, such as this, as one and the same as paper journalism.

Clearly Liddle chose the wrong subject to be controversial about and even then the Press Complaints Commission had to resort to nit picking over the use of overwhelming to make the charge stick.

What it does signal is a change in attitude to bloggers who, to date, have largely been considered outside the normal rules governing ' real journalists'

This kind of unpleasantness abounds on the internet but for how much longer?

The positive side is for real journalists, like Rod Liddle,  for who, blogging is a pain in the backside. Acres of rubbish is forgotten about when one blogger stumbles across a real story and suddenly blogging is hailed as the future.

Let's hope the PCC studies a few more blogs for accuracy

One of the things that has always struck me about optics is the security of employment.

Graduates have never faced such a tough time when leaving university as they do at the moment but  this doesn't look like something that will affect optometry graduates.

The Optician jobs site currently carries over 1,200 jobs, nearly 1,000 of which are for optoms. Obviously there is a fair bit of double counting going on here but the trend is good.

While many graduates are stacking shelves in Tesco waiting for their particular market to perk up optometrists, DOs and optical managers are enjoying a market that just doesn't want to lie down.

The government's scrappage scheme for cars has been so successful it got me thinking, wouldn't the same thing work for optics.

I see so many people walking around in old banger specs it makes perfects sense.

It also has the advantage of not working against the environment ( I thought Labour were the new Green Party) or encouraging people to drive faster .

It didn't take the motoring lobby long to get the governement to divvy up a subsidy so why can't optics do it?

The optical bodies are so good at lobbying it shouldn't be  a problem to convince those in the corridors of power that it would be a good thing. people would be more productive, they would have less accidents and it would privide a filip to the economy. It would also make Britain a more attaractive place to live.

Best of all taxpayers wouldn't have to shell out £2,000 a head to line the pockets of the oil companies, the car companies and the finance companies.