I had a bit of a strange experience this week at the optician/optometrist (you choose). Firstly, when I contacted the practice to enquire if I could arrange an appointment, I was informed that I could either have the next day at 9am (an alleged cancellation) or towards the end of the month. I opted for the next day as my current glasses had broken, this time irreparably, a week or so prior to Christmas and I was surviving on store bought readers, the value of which was definitely waning over time.
During the examination, I faced the usual onslaught of tests on my eyes, letter chart, visual field, eye pressure, etc. Following this, I was asked whether I would be happy to proceed with an eye scan as extra and at cost, at what I have to say felt like a fair price. The person conducting the test explained the scan would be used to determine if there had been any change in my eye health over the intervening period since my last examination. He then mumbled something almost incoherently under his breath, which I could swear was along the lines of ‘and will be used to determine your ability to thrive and prosper under the upcoming New World Order’, or something uncannily similar. By this time, I was exhausted having gone through the aforementioned testing regime. I let it pass as I am no conspiracy theorist or anti-vaxxer type. I just like to know things and sometimes surf the net looking ‘under the bonnet’ of the MSM. Anyway, test done, nothing untoward, except for that wee throbbing red circle on my shoulder. Funny I have no recollection of receiving any kind of inoculation.
The replacement glasses I seek to purchase are unfortunately pretty expensive if procured from one of the select optician/optometrists licensed (or something like that) to sell them. So I took to the internet to see if I could source them elsewhere and found the self-same ones at a fraction of the price â and that included the varifocal Ienses I require. The site seemed legitimate so I set about entering the various information requirements to spec my glasses. All straightforward enough, however, when it came to the prescription, I followed and completed the boxes in turn, that is until I came to the one marked PDS. Having no idea of what this was I clicked the adjacent information button giving me a quick description of what it meant. It was reading this that raised the red flag. I had to go over it a couple of times before it fully sunk in. The information/advice was ‘Contact your optician, though they may choose not to divulge this information to you’, or something along those lines. By now my suspicions and blood pressure were rapidly rising. I was getting in deeper and my eyes were beginning to open (if you pardon the pun). If not to me, then who? Why was this information being collected and for whom and to which purpose was it to be put? But more importantly why the hushed secrecy behind it all? There was no doubt a picture was developing and connections, as yet unmade, were obviously there to be unearthed.
So now, rather nervously, being all in on the nefarious forces in operation behind this misuse of information, I resolved to find out what was going on. Everywhere I looked the facts were stacking up. I thought back to my experience at the optician/optometrist during the exhaustive exam and it struck me that our very way of life was being threatened and this in plain sight, if only you knew how to look for it.
Naturally, I took the only course of action available to me and phoned my optician/optometrist and aggressively demanded they release this critical information which they were withholding. The ‘operative’ on the other end of the phone was hesitant, a sure sign of guilt and started giving an anodyne response that PDS was a measurement between the pupils and helped determine blah blah… aye right. I cut in at this point informing them I was on to them and mentioned the New World Order comment which I now had an absolute and clear recollection of having being made by the person conducting the scan. At that point, the call was disconnected. They had been rumbled.
As I sit here, I was really not sure what to do with this information, though I felt it was my duty and responsibility to share this information with the world to shine a light on this iniquitous practice (or at least inform readers of Scottish Review).
Keep The Faith. They Are Out There.
(and, yes, of course this is a parody)
Frank Eardley
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