Hi Simon, welcome to Shoot Up! Pull up a chair and join in with the despond and misery. 
I can already see readers girding their loins about you being refused a pump. This is just the sort of thing we all like to get eggy about. 
My A1C was good – in the sixes on MDI – and I still got a pump. This was because I demonstrated that the decent average was caused by massive swings – lots of lows and lots of highs. Interestingly my A1C is now “worse” now I’m on a pump. Quality of life is far better, which – yet again – shows what a crap measure A1C is by itself.
BG monitoring – Continuous Glucose Monitoring – with a pump is difficult to get funded on the NHS. But some people – including my esteemed co-writer – have managed it. I daresay Alison will burble on about this in a minute when she sees this thread.