There’s a new ‘outcry’ about MP’s expenses. Not the last outcry, nor the seven before that, nor the previous 73, but a new one. And its all about glasses. Overspending on ‘designer’ models then claiming them as expenses for us to buy for them.

Eyewear. Spectacles. Something about which I claim something of an understanding.

The most successful optical retailers in the world are Specsavers. They are everywhere, they are cheap, fairly nasty, treat people as if on a production line and flog them two pairs of glasses for the price of one. Both pairs are shitty but the price is so cheap that it doesn’t matter. And this model is so successful, with people who want to look like they’ve been to Specsavers, that their advertising campaigns have entered the general language as a metaphor. Which is about as successful as you can ever get.

“Should have gone to Specsavers” rings the phrase. And it was used just yesterday in the Times following Andre Marriner’s sending off the wrong Arsenal player after ‘an incident’. And in that context its rather funny. And its used in lots of instances when people miss their target in some way.

Specsavers’ model is built on the ‘pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap’ ethos. And it works. But results in a particular Specsavers look which is not the most flattering, but is very cheap. And, I mean, they’re glasses, they only sit on your face, not like its anywhere important really.

Then Specsavers decided, many years ago, that some people prefer to pay more for their glasses, want better quality, a better look, something perhaps befitting a Government Minister who faces the cameras 25 times a week. So they introduced their ‘designer range’. Wow; ‘designer’!!!! Fab. Presumably because the other ranges aren’t actually designed, they just grow naturally on industrial estates in China and are plucked by 9-year-old Orientals to be shipped west. But these others: ‘Designer’. Which for Specsavers involved making the same cheap, mass-produced, low-cost rubbish but embellishing the sides with an unlikely ‘designer’ name, in really big letters. Specsavers never did ‘subtle’.

Alphonso Mollinari, these specs proclaim. Spaghetti Carbonara. Leonardo di Piscardelli. Allessandro Del Pieiro. Francesco Capuccino.

Hey, pretty ‘designerish’, eh?? Italian = Designer, surely.

And this, for the general populus, particularly Specsavers’ fans, created the ridiculous expression ‘designer glasses’, implying something better, something more desirable, certainly something more expensive. Hence the outcry that MPs have spent “£174 on a pair of glasses!!!!!!!!!” That money would buy 16 pairs in Specsavers or one really good quality lens in my practice. A lens that would eliminate computer fatigue, cut out reflections, be perfectly focussed at all distances, be scratch resistant, light as a feather, increase the size of your penis, remove wrinkles, eliminate halitosis and make women drop at your feet. Particularly after you’d spent the other £174 for the other eye and a few hundred on a seriously gorgeous frame guaranteed to have absolutely no wankers named on the sides. Italian or otherwise.

Ya pays yer money ya takes your choice.

Should have gone to Westminster.

Happy monday (for Spurs and Barcelona fans, or both, it certainly is)

A xxxx