WHEN is an ambulance service not an ambulance service? When it’s an emergency and clinical services, er, service.

Not much of a Christmas cracker joke, is it?

The Welsh Government has begun a public consultation on a proposal to change the name of the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust, as part of a series of alterations to ambulance provision in Wales. It is in the wake of the McClelland Review, published earlier this year, which basically concluded the service isn’t good enough and needs a damn good shake-up.

Fair enough. But while it is fair to say a name change is not the only proposal on the table – there are far more fundamental ideas, involving funding and the setting up of a new body to decide how services are provided – it is fair to say it is one of the most puzzling.

Perhaps I’m ‘old school’, but I quite like the idea of a service which involves ambulances actually having the word ‘ambulance’ in the title.

An aim of changing the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust name to the Welsh Emergency and Clinical Services NHS Trust is to acknowledge the ambulance service is part of what should be a more seamless set of services around the delivery of emergency care.

In Wales, the ambulance service’s travails are well documented, and the saying ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ cannot be said to apply to key parts of the service. Some of it is broken, and needs fixing.

The role of the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust is set to change too, it becoming more of a provider, rather than a commissioner of services. Yet another new body – the emergency ambulance services committee – will do that job.

Even so, the public is used to using the phrase ‘ambulance service’. I cannot believe changing its name and leaving the word out of the title is going to mean people start thinking, ‘oh no, auntie’s fallen, I’ll just call Emergency and Clinical Services.”

Where will all of this end?

The recent PISA results and Wales banding programme for schools has triggered fierce debate over the standard of education not only here but in the rest of the UK.

Does that mean somewhere in Cardiff, in Edinburgh, in Belfast, in London, civil servants and politicians are proposing to stop using the word ‘school’ to describe a school?

What would we end up with then? Learning Zone? Knowledge Box?

Follow that sort of logic to its conclusion and we will end up calling services and buildings, and just about everything else, by names that are at best vague, and confusing.

It is all part of the curse of branding. And if you have branding, you have to have rebranding, in case the ‘brand’ is tarnished, or seems out of date. This sort of thing usually comes with a new logo too and, for those organisations that still use it, new headed notepaper.

Call me old fashioned, but I can’t be doing with it – and that feeling gets stronger the further away a rebranding process takes the service from what it actually is.

The ranting stops on Christmas Eve

IT has been pointed out to me by my other half that I am getting “rantier” (if such a word exists) by the week in this column, and in life in general.

That of course, is nonsense - though with Christmas almost upon us, I think it is appropriate to get into the ‘festive spirit’, as that incredibly irritating phrase goes.

Around this time of the year, if you haven’t got a big, daft smile on your face, it is only a matter of time before someone says “oh, come on, where’s your festive spirit?”

That usually prompts a reply laced with sarcasm, and an almost overwhelming urge to bind the offender with bubble-wrap and send them to Lapland by second class post.

There I go again. Maybe she had a point.

But I long since concluded that as far as Christmas goes, it is a myriad of small events and feelings that make combine to make it special - a beautifully decorated Christmas tree (like the one in the South Wales Argus reception area), or wrapping presents, or writing cards, or finding that ideal present whether planned or unplanned.

Despite not being what my mum would call “churchy”, I am particularly susceptible to random snatches of hymns or carols, that can instil an instant festive feeling like nothing else.

But the most satisfying is late Christmas Eve, after the preparations are complete, but before going to bed, when all the stresses and worries and fretting drop away.

Then I like to sit with a wee dram and only the Christmas tree lights to see by.

Silent night, indeed. Happy Christmas.