First off, a question if I may. Has anyone EVER fallen for a rebranding exercise?

Marathons are still marathons, Opal Fruits were never Starburst or whatever they called them and the Tory Party are still a shower of bastards despite any claim to the contrary.

And until this week the Royal Mail had resisted all attempts to rechristen it as Consignia or God knows what else and flog it off lock stock and barrel to the highest bidder.

Likewise David Cameron’s Big Society scheme has so far taken four attempts to get off the ground. The Wright brothers didn’t need that many goes.

In the year 2015 do they still think that we’ll tug our forelocks and say “thank ’ee kindly master” for that old shite? Really?

Well apparently they do. As this week a right-wing think tank has advised holistic health minster Jeremy Hunt that his latest wheeze for the NHS should be the introduction of “innovation scouts.”

What does that even mean? Innovation scouts … I ask you.

Here’s an innovation for you. Stop spending all the sodding money on external consultants and middle management and employ some doctors and nurses.

Presumably the Innovation Scouts will team up with the can-do Cubs and the blue-sky thinking brownies.

Now, I know the unofficial motto of Baden-Powell’s paramilitary paedophile ring was “be prepared” — it had to be — but I doubt if even they could utilise their Swiss army knives to perform thoracic surgery or an emergency appendectomy.

The last thing you want to hear before you go under the knife is to hear the surgeon say: “Dib dib dib.”

And all that rubbing sticks together would play hell with sterilisation procedures.

Plus, it would take more than a woggle and a knots badge to stem all that bleeding.

Now, I know that some readers will point out that I am deliberately misusing the term for comedic effect.

Yet that’s the exact same trick the Tories have been employing for the last five years and if they can get away with it, so can I.

In fact, since their improbable election last month all they’ve done is reintroduce their old policies with a slightly new name, or go-faster stripes.

They can dress it up however they want, but their plans to decimate the welfare state and screw over the workers are nothing but an ideological assault with the side benefit of lining their mates’ pockets with lucrative privatisation deals.

I personally can’t wait until the doctor treating me in A&E, with the McDonald’s sponsorship deal on his white coat, refuses to treat me because I’m a vegetarian.

Collect just five hundred tokens from Big Macs and get half price liposuction, we’ll just recycle what we suck out and put it back in the food!

Believe me, that is going to happen.

Undeterred by common sense and totally unhindered by talent, the former minister for Murdoch will push all these suggestions through, because he hasn’t got the first clue himself.

In fact, it is only a matter of time before the NHS, so beloved of Cameron for the care they afforded his terminally ill son as he reminds us ad nauseam, itself becomes rebranded as the National Help-Yourself Service.

Moving further afield and once again we come to that most chameleonic of characters Tony Blair, who when it comes to rebranding himself could give Prince a lesson or two.

You will recall that last week Blair jumped ship on the peace envoy gig only to pop up mere days later with a brand spanking new position.

Yes, Blair announced this week, with no hint of shame, that he is to become the chairman of an organisation that combats anti-semitism and racism in Europe.

Blair is to head up the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, which is a bit like making Idi Amin the UN envoy on Asian affairs.

Now, one would assume that in Blair’s case a large part of his role would have to involve him shutting his mouth and desisting from blaming uppity Muslims and Iran for everything.

But then that’s never been his style. Following his messianic conversion to Catholicism he seems to have adopted a somewhat novel interpretation regarding that line about casting the first stone.

Still, the Tories should be happy with that: if he does half as good a job as he did in the Middle East the EU will be nothing more than a charred wasteland in a couple of months.

And speaking of casting the first stone, or in some cases destroying it, Tory culture minister Ed Vaizey has announced plans to fast track ratification of the Hague convention on protecting cultural property in warzones as soon as possible amid fears that Islamic State militants will destroy the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria.

The 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict would introduce sanctions for anyone that destroys or desecrates cultural artefacts during wars.

Yes, you read that right, 1954 … and they’re only getting round to thinking about ratifying it now.

Hmmm, that couldn’t be because Britain was still happily plundering large parts of the world at that time, and spent many of the intervening years blowing the hell out of the rest, could it?

The difference of course being that when we bury someone’s culture under tons of rubble we’re doing it for their own good.