You've never had it so good

Lord Young got into a bit of hot water last week with his repeat of Harold MacMillan's famous phrase but the question still hangs in the air for optics. While most of the public sector has put its tin hat on and braced itself for impact optometry seems to have fared fairly well.

Figures this week ( see Optician on Friday) show that the optometry budget in Scotland is actually up while that in Wales has remained steady.

Scotland and Wales both have governments keen on health funding but even so, compared to others, perhaps Lord Youngs wasn't so wrong. England, of course, doesn't have it quite so good. Perhaps the one upside of optometry's continual subsidising of the NHS is that when the axe falls, there's very little to actually cut.