Election fever is a serious public health threat. However, because optometry and optics is largely written out of the NHS it has not penetrated the anti-viral walls that surround what is the anomalous commercial/retail/health world that is optics. Sadly there are no votes in eyes and vision remains sadly lacking.
The disease can be spotted instantly as large pools of sharks lie in wait preying on every word uttered by any prospective politician as they practise their chosen profession of divide, spread bad news and dissent and attempt to rule. Meanwhile rulers and prospective rulers outdo themselves in sprouting promises we’d be embarrassed if we made our kids. It helps the terms are rarely defined and the numbers are very big.
For example ‘privatisation of the NHS’; useful because it panders to the Stasi inspired left wing control economists where we can’t have the best, we can only have what they deem is the best and solutions lie in taking money off someone else and distributing it to apparatchiks (Nicola, I’m talking to you). It also panders to those espousing right wing, free-market ideology where the market can solve all ills, including the common cold.
Privatisation could be any one of a few things, private ownership of the capital investment in the NHS (off-balance sheet PFI, nice one Gordon). It could be payment to private contractors to deliver healthcare. Sometimes this works such as optometry, dentistry and even GPs, but only up to a point. Usually only as long as the primary care money hasn’t been squirrelled away by the BMA .
What are the symptoms? Fortunately the NHS in its feverishly (sic) has released guidance: ‘Common symptoms include a tendency to talk nonsense, inability to distinguish opinion and prejudice from fact, and refusal to see more than one side of an argument. Some sufferers become delusional and believe everything they say, while others become so credulous that they believe anything they hear. Other symptoms are boredom, apathy and bouts of irritability.’
Is there a cure? No. It’s a virus so antibiotics won’t help. According to the NHS: ‘The only way to avoid infection completely is to move to a country that has escaped the spread of democracy. There are several to choose from including Syria, Iraq, Russia and several African states, where it has been almost completely eradicated.”
At least we can rely on Tesco to put it into perspective. Valuing an eye-test below that of a tin of beans; ‘every little helps’.