The Prime Minister has branded a new advert by popular optician firm, Specsavers, as "unhelpful and irresponsible" in light of the government's new guidance on homeowners' rights when confronted by burglars.
The advert, which can only be broadcast after 9:00pm due to its highly graphic violence, begins with a man thanking his friends for leaving him home after a night out and then attempting to open the front door with his keys. When this fails, he spots an open window on the ground floor and climbs in through it. However, once he gets inside, he is brutally set upon by a large, angry man wielding a baseball bat, a knife and a pair of pliers.
As his screams for mercy eventually fade away to a despairing death rattle, it is revealed that he had, in fact, entered someone else's house rather than his own by mistake. At the funeral, one of his friends turns to another as the coffin is being lowered into the earth and whispers the advice that the deceased "Should have gone to Specsavers."
"This advert is misleading in the extreme," said the Prime Minister. "People do not break into other people's houses because they have an incorrectly treated myopic condition. No, they break into other people's houses because they're rotters and cads and poor people and they need to be shot on sight."
Despite the strong criticism levelled at them by the government, Specsavers remain unrepentant and claim that they are highlighting a serious issue. "Our research suggests that the vast majority of crimes could be prevented by proper opthalmic treatment and that up to 85% of short-sighted "criminals" in British jails are only there due to the use of rival optician services," said a spokesman for the corporation. "I mean, my brother didn't go to Specsavers and he mistook an 8 year old girl for a 28 year old nymphomaniac. Now he's doing a ten year stretch."
