Yesterday morning I spotted a letter lying on the dining table. It was addressed to my father, who is a teacher. The letter was from the rector of his school. I read through it. It was quite a crap letter really. It really just said, “Thanks, and have a good holiday.” As if people normally expect their employers to write a letter giving them the bird for no good reason.

I am not sure if such letters are standard practice, but it did seem to be a bit of a waste to me. Not just a waste of money in terms of postage costs — but a waste of time of whoever wrote it, and a waste of time of all the people who had to read the rather banal letter.

I don’t know what my father thought of the letter. But if I was the recipient of it, I think I would have thrown it in the bin. And I would have thought to myself, “If they were really sincere about it, why did they not say that to my face?”

Reluctant Hero at Our Scotland is pretty impressed by a similar letter which has been sent out by Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon to every employee of NHS Scotland.

From cleaner to consultant, the letter thanked us for efforts, particularly over the last week or so.

Now this is hardly anything worthy of the BBC running a special news bulletin on, but I think it is extremely significant. It shows, in my opinion, the massive difference between the SNP in government and the Labour Party in government.

I doubt that any Labour MSP ever wrote to a public sector employee to say “bollocks to the lot of you!” Given the banal nature of Nicola Sturgeon’s message, of course the first thing I did was work out how much it cost to send it.

The NHS Scotland website says that it employed approximately 158,000 people in 2006. This means that sending a letter to each NHS Scotland employee by second class would cost £37,920. Which is quite a lot more than an average annual income.

Of course, it is a drop in the ocean in terms of public spending. But I just thought I’d say, you know. It seems like a bit of a pointless letter to send. It might have given NHS employees a fuzzy feeling inside for half a day or so. But beyond that, I doubt it was really worth the thirty-eight thousand big ones to tell people something that is surely a given.

I can’t stand the smugness of those Get a Mac adverts with Mitchell and Webb in them. I especially hate the one that says Macs never crash. That’s just bullshit. I’m sure OS X is better, but the last Mac I used crashed all the time. As for this PC with Windows XP — for all its faults — it crashes far, far less often.

It’s like when Labour blame the state of the NHS on the Conservatives. Maybe that was so ten years ago…

Anyway, I saw this banner ad on Comment is Free and I can’t help but wonder if these adverts are really sending out the right message. I mean, if you were undecided between purchasing a Mac and a PC, would this advert really sway you?

I mean, surely if you wanted fun you’d just buy a Wii wouldn’t you? Moreover, this makes ‘Mac’ look like one of those awful people that go around the place telling everybody how fun they are.

With these adverts, David Letterman got it right.

These days I keep on getting junk mail from Specsavers trying to get me to arrange a FREE! eye test. Since the eye tests became free at the point of use in Scotland less than a year ago I must have received at least four letters about it, and they are becoming increasingly exasperated by my non-attendance.

Today’s letter begins with a line in big bold writing:

An URGENT message about your FREE eye examination

It’s now nearly three and a half years since your last sight test at this practice.

How do they know it’s urgent? Something tells me that I might be in a better position to judge whether or not I need an eye test. It’s quite simple really. If I can’t see easily, I’ll take a trip to the opticians like I did several years ago. If I can see easily, I won’t take a trip to the opticians — because I don’t need to.

I’m pretty certain that my eyesight hasn’t deteriorated in the past three and a half years. In fact, the optician that tested my eyes the last time actually gave me a row because I turned up and my eyesight hadn’t changed.

I know there is probably a good reason why the boss of Specsavers is the boss of Specsavers whereas I stack shelves in Woolies. But these letters still confuse me. Why do they now keep on sending these letters which shout louder at me each time and at an increasing frequency? Unless they must do so by law (which seems far fetched to me), they can only be doing this because they think they can make money in future, using the free eye tests as a loss leader. So why did they not make their eye tests free anyway, before the Scottish Executive told them to?