The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available…
When you access the ‘Managed Metadata Service’ Management Tool from Central Admin – Manage Service…
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You receive the following error…
The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started, Contact your Administrator.
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So, obviously I checked the Managed Metadata Service and this was indeed started. So after much troubleshooting and several term store recreations I double checked the SharePoint 2010 Installation guides and spotted that there is now a required WCF hot fix.
After installing this the problem is resolved 
You can get the hot fix ‘KB976462 – SharePoint Shared Services Roll-ip’ at
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB976462/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3571
