We need some heroes

BACK in the 1960s when Guernsey's current political elite were still preparing for their twilight years career in various outhouses, I had the honour and privilege to meet a real Guernsey hero.

This one wasn't a hero of the sports field or race track, nor was he a hero of the environmental movement. Colonel Harry Poat was a hero of a world war.

For those who never met him, this quote from a book about his old regiment describes him to a tee: 'He spoke with a cut-glass accent, sported a Ronald Colman moustache and even in the desert he was immaculately attired.'

'You could have taken Harry Poat, pulled him through a smoking chimney and he would still have appeared as if he'd just come out for dinner,' according to the book Stirling's Men: The Inside History of the SAS in World War II, by Gavin Mortimer.

When I met him I knew him only as an estate agent/auctioneer trying to sell my Dad's farm.

I was charmed by him and the outrageous stories he told me every time we met. Not war stories, I didn't know about his past, but tales of the extraordinary, like the binoculars so powerful he could watch sand worms moving on the beach from the top of the south coast cliffs.

I filed him under 'charming something merchant' in my memory and time moved on.

Over 20 years later I was on a business trip staying in a bijou hotel in Leeds (a much nicer place than it sounds) which had a small pile of books by the side of the bed.

I noticed one was about the SAS and I flicked through looking at the pictures. Blow me down, there was a young Harry Poat.

The Old Elizabethan former tomato grower turned desert warrior.

His exploits were many and his courage undoubted.

His cheek was legendary, as evidenced by a drunken phone call he made to Winston Churchill involving some choice phrases that should never be shared between a junior officer and his Prime Minister.

For those who've never heard of him, I suggest he's worth a bit of research.

What has brought on my nostalgic reminiscence of the great man? Nothing other than an excellent BBC documentary, The Rogue Warriors of the SAS.

A concurrent theme of the early days of the service was the need for a different way of waging war.

A way for tiny units to punch well above their weight and to quickly adapt to changing enemy tactics.

The secret was to stay small, ignore as many of the rules as could be got away with and, most of all, to be independent.

Regimental rules and procedures were ignored. Spit and polish was not the order of the day.

The ultimate aim was to win the war and the SAS needed to survive to do that. Independence was essential to enable the instant exploitation of enemy weaknesses. While others were still risk reviewing, the SAS were driving, all guns blazing, between lines of German aircraft on airfields miles behind the lines.

Guernsey was once the SAS, but is no more.

We were once small, nimble and reluctant to adopt the regulations and protocols of bigger nations which could only hobble us and slow us down.

We once considered retaining our independence as the number one aim and understood that fiscal responsibility was the best way to be certain of it.

We knew we couldn't compete with the big boys if we played by their rules.

When did that all change? Now we want to be one of the big boys.

We strive to copy every new bit of spit and polish they introduce.

If they have some sort of restrictive regulation which drives up the product price and reduces competitiveness then we must have it too.

They have an awful problem and legislate against it. We don't really have the problem, but we copy the legislation anyway. Surely there's no problem with that except a waste of time and money?

Unfortunately, there is a problem.

As we try to be nimble again, all that red tape comes out and wraps itself around our legs and we find we can't move quickly, or even at all.

If we can't be nimble at least we can be independent in our thinking and use that to ensure we never get into the financial mess that will force us to go cap in hand to the UK and ask to be the Isle of Wight Two. (Though a benefit of joining the UK is that we immediately get all the legislation, rules and regulations so many of our deputies claim we are lacking.)

Unfortunately, we do nothing to take advantage of opportunities to do things more economically efficiently than our bigger neighbours. In fact, we climb mountains to ensure we spend at least as much as they do – probably more, because we have no economies of scale – just to prove we can march as well as the Brigade of Guards on ceremonial duties.

The waste strategy is the perfect example of this. Every Green deputy I've heard speaking about waste can hardly refer to the economic efficiency of the previous strategy without expressing distaste for the 'cheapness' of it. As though a cheap solution, rather than being a stroke of political genius, was somehow a very bad thing.

As you are reading this the debate is over. But I bet not a single speech opened with an apology that there isn't the brainpower in the current Assembly to keep waste disposal as cheap as previous assemblies had.

In a troubled world we need heroes. Deputy Harry Poat, will we see your like again?