Ration Your Hot Flushes

Menopausal women are getting a teaser trailer for the epic of entrepreneurial stoicism which will soon engulf the rest of us in its passport-blue folds. There is a shortage of hormone replacement patches, thanks to a supply problem which Her Majesty's Government will no doubt welcome thanks to its origins with the Heathen Chinee rather than with the doings of Chris Graybeing or Jeremy Chunt. Despite our great nation's famous proclivity for doing more with less, it appears that the reduction in available HRT patches has resulted in there being fewer HRT patches to go round: a mathematical conundrum which has caused concern in high-street pharmacies and baffled the boffins at the Royal College of Obstetricians. The Department of Health and Saleable Care claims to be working on it, although for some reason this does not seem to have visibly cheered anyone up.