So, a group of enthusiastic entrepreneurs thinks it would be “an honour” to take on the BusinessLink name and run it, for nothing, as an online small business community?

Following figures released last year revealing that BusinessLink.gov.uk, the government’s flagship business support service, costs £35m a year to run, the founders of group buying service Huddlebuy said their idea could mean that the service costs the government nothing to maintain.

An honour, they say? What a load of nonsense! I see BusinessLink as a tired old outfit run by tired old executives that costs a hefty £35m a year to run. It could well be ‘phoenixed’ from the ashes, but it wouldn’t be for the honour; it would be for the brand, the database and – oh yes – the filthy lucre.

While I think the brand should have been executed in a dark room somewhere in Clerkenwell a decade ago, I’ll admit that there may be a flicker of opportunity here. The brand could be brought into the here and now by sprucing it up and tweeting its rebirth from the highest crow’s nest … and then making crateloads of money out of it by linking like crazy, and building a sizeable SME database so powerful and valuable that it lures in lucrative advertising and sponsorship deals … making it such an attractive acquisition target that someone like LinkedIn would buy it for way over the odds.

And as for turning it into a social community, BusinessLink is already a social community – or at least it’s meant to be. The problem is that it’s the wrong community living off the back of a flawed government subsidised model reaching too many small businesses and offering them very little. In short, I’ve always regarded it as totally ineffective. The trouble with paying nothing for nothing is you get… well, nothing.

You may think I’m a cynical old high-end taxpayer who’s bitter at having subsidised ex-building society managers to advise small businesses for 20 years or more in between games of golf and Rotary Club dinners. But any real businessman will see straight through this pitch by Huddlebuy as a fairly shrewd or naïve play. Either way, it’s got them noticed and it’s got people talking.

Tell you what: now I come to think of it, I could easily beat their offer. I’d give a tenner for BusinessLink, as long as the government takes on the lease liability, redundancy and TUPE obligations – and, when I earn some money out of it, I’ll even offer them a return. Now that really would be an honour.