OT: Rant

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Bollocks. Good ones provide far superior vision than specs. Much safer too.

[Tim Streater]

Insurance is about spreading risk. So if your house burns down you're covered not just by the premium you paid but also the premiums of the

9999 others whose houses *didn't* burn down.

The notion that you can have insurance for things that everyone will need is a nonsense.

Indeed you should. £5 on making a booking would be about right, with say £3 refundable if you actually turn up. Clinics already deal with dosh for prescriptions, this would be a simple extension.

[Terry Casey]

My wife has switched to bi-focal hard lenses, so no more reading glasses.

The first optictian she talked to was most dicouraging and talked her out of them - now she knows better, she says she wished she hadn't listened to him!

[Davey]

Not knowing what a 'posterior vitreous detachment' is in this context, it sounds as though you got up off the loo!

Sorry about that, as you were.

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

Soft contact lenses come in different diameters. An optician changed mine a few years back saying the original optician had over-reacted to my slightly larger than normal radius. The new ones fit much more positively but are slightly more difficult to remove. They only move when I am stupid enough to towel dry my eyelids too vigorously.

[S Viemeister]

I miss wearing contacts. It was like having normal eyesight, and no problems with fogged lenses.

[dennis]

I have tried a computerised laser tester that measured both of my eyes in about 30 seconds and got the same prescription as the normal eye test I had afterwards. So a decent practice can do it even if they are lost.

I think its a development of the experiments I was paid to do while at IC in the '70s (where they used lasers to measure various bits in my eyes).

There is an older, more crude tester out there that I have also tried, you looked at pictures of a house and it fiddled with lenses. They are only an approximation though.

Either way it is still a compromise and the optician may well not prescribe the same.

[Mike Barnes]

"Dave Plowman (News)" :

That didn't help when I was unhappy with my first-ever pair of glasses. I took them back, they measured them, pronounced them correct, and told me I'd get used to them.

Actually the prescription was completely wrong, as I found out when I eventually went to another opticians for another test.

Is there a reason why opticians can't test your eyesight wearing your prescription glasses or contact lenses? This seems to me the obvious way to check whether they actually work as intended.

[Martin Bonner]

Actually eye tests are free for the over-40s if you have a relative with glaucoma. Also, if you are an employee (I can't remember whether the OP is or not), and you work with visual display units (and who doesn't work with computers these days?), then your employer has to pay for sight tests.

... but your question is a good one. Eye tests /should/ be free ... but please don't let a few pounds put you off. SWMBO's father is now blind because of glaucoma that was untreated for many years.

[Man at B&Q]

Just tell them there is a family history of Glaucoma. Free test every

12 months. No checks are made.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

Free test *every* year if there is a history of Glaucoma in the family.

MBQ

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

Please note uncles and grandparents do not count!

[Peter Crosland]

Whne people resort to expletives it is a sure sign that they don't hav solid rational basis for their claims. Most of what you have said so far has been risible.Can you produce some actual verifiable evidence to support your assertion?

Peter Crosland

[PeterC]

That's what I did and it was true but not valid. For some reason that's beyond me, my Father's eyes were tested in hospital during advanced lung cancer. Almost everything was out of kilter and by then I knew that he'd a month at the most. The glaucoma was due, IIRC, to abnormal pressures or something, not just age etc. Apart from the waste of an eye test, it was useful to be able to tell the optician a limited version - I was ~45 at the time.

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

TBH I wear lenses regularly for several reasons

Cosmetic

Greater field of vision

Easier to slip sunspecs off and on when driving than changing specs. (I have had photochromics and hated them

Mine have a UV filter (even if they only cover part of the eye)

I bowl in a tenpin bowling league which I find impossible wearing varifocals

I would need separate distance, reading and VDU specs to cover my needs. Much easier to wear lenses and use readyspex when needed.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Free?

Most opt for better looking frames etc than the NHS will pay for, so this must be vanity too.

However, spectacles do a poor job of correcting certain types of 'defects'.

[Andy Dingley]

My (large) employer eventually paid for mine. After _fourteen_ phone calls to HR. Even by the obstructive standards of our HR trolls, that was a substantial bit of stonewalling. These were also phone calls between two people on their company time. Now _that's_ management cost- saving at its finest.

[John Bryan]

The "No checks are made" statement depends upon the optician. My younger sister needed confirmation from mother's doctor that Glaucoma was part of our family's medical history. No problem with GP sending a letter to my sister's home address.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I take it you have no personal experience of contact lenses?

After losing that lens, I drove home in the daylight using my emergency specs. And the number of times I got a flare across my vision with them was frightening.

Contact lenses provide far superior optics for those with short sight. Specs give tunnel vision with that.

Oh - any spectacle frames other than the most basic could also be regarded as a cosmetic aid.

[dennis]

Opticians have a range of free glasses, free in that they cost no more than the vouchers you can get. There is something in the NHS contracts IIRC.