I’ve had the NHS prescription written, I’ve sent it off to the suppliers I’ve waited I’ve rung I’ve emailed But – no drugs. Now, listen carefully; not even Franz Kafka came up with a bureaucracy as spookily arcane as this. Even though my care trust here in Essex has agreed to pay, it appears that the initial cash needs to come from Bart’s Trust in London. And some pharmacist at Bart’s has put a stop on the prescription because, even though it was ordered to prescribe by the Department of Health, the London-based Barking Primary Care Trust hasn’t yet had its meeting at which the funding is to be agreed (Bart’s comes within its area, believe it or not).

It’s scheduled for some time this month.What the hell is going on with the NHS when some bastard from Barking can stop me getting the drugs which my GP and my neurologist think I need – and my local trust will cough up for? My sister’s old boss, Nicholas Soames, kindly even put down a couple of Parliamentary Questions about the problem The answer to the first was quick and concise. Minister Hazel Blears wrote to him that “Copaxone is available on the NHS under the risk-sharing scheme for disease-modifying drugs for multiple sclerosis that came into operation on 6 May 2002″ Clear, swift – and no help at all. For the minister chose not to answer, yet, the second question: “To ask the Secretary of State for Health if Copaxone is available at St Batholomew’s Hospital; and for what reasons a valid prescription for Copaxone would be inadmissible.” You might think that one hard to evade, but following last week’s revelations from the Lib Dems about just how sneakily civil servants try to avoid straight questions, I’ve looked for the flaw in this one And I’m afraid I’ve found it. You see, my prescription did not come from Bart’s itself – it came from the London, another hospital in Bart’s Trust. So I fully expect more flannel, more waiting, more frustration.A year or so ago I described the desperation among MS sufferers like me for a big name to come down with our disease. Not that I wish it on any of them, but it would certainly be handy if we could garner a bit of the “sexy” cachet that Michael J Fox, Muhammed Ali and even Ronald Reagan have given to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Why can’t we bag a big-name victim?Well, now we have The biggest of them all Potus himself.

For the uninitiated, that means the President of the United States. Yes, that finger on the nuclear button could well have a worrisome shake, as Josiah Bartlett reaches out towards all our annihilations Josiah who?, you may ask I’m afraid that’s the problem Its not the real Potus, that gurning goof from Texas. It’s just the pretend one portrayed by Martin Sheen in Channel 4’s The West Wing who’s got the disease. OK, so he looks a bit like JFK – they’ve even got that Kennedyesque photo from behind in the opening titles But he’s not real. He’s bull.Rather like those free drugs we all heard so much about.. Something very odd appears to be happening

Something very odd appears to be happening The stock market is having a mini nervous breakdown. Some newspapers suggest that the middle classes are getting twitchy about the amount they are paying out in taxes.

Business leaders have been fuming about their tax burden since the Budget. Yet tomorrow the Chancellor, Mr Prudence himself, will go on a spending spree. While other major economies are cutting back on public spending projects he will be pumping billions more into education and other services, having already pledged to spend billions of additional pounds on the NHS. What is going on? Is this the moment when New Labour becomes Old Labour, alienating the middle classes and its relatively new allies in business?
Evidently the Conservatives sense they are on to something. Iain Duncan Smith suggested last week that he did not believe that significantly higher public spending was necessarily required.