WITHOUT a doubt the most amazing, even astonishing (to people here, at least) story of the week was the news that just a week after a 100 foot wide, 50 foot deep sinkhole appeared on a downtown street in the Japanese city of Fukuoka, the street has been reopened with not a trace of the disaster to be seen!

The efficiency with which the Japanese dealt with this situation puts Britain to shame.

Here, it takes months for the authorities to deal with sinkholes a fraction the size of the one that opened in Fukuoka.

In fact, more than a year after a much smaller hole opened up on a housing estate in St Albans, people forced to evacuate their homes at the time are still unable to move back into their homes!

Might it not be a good idea to send some of our highway management personnel to Japan or, better still, recruit some of Japan’s top people to come over here and instil some of their countrymen’s work ethos and efficiency in the workforce here?

If the Japanese can respond with such efficiency when disaster strikes, there is absolutely no reason why we should not be able to do the same.

And another very admirable quality displayed by the Japanese is that when things do go wrong, the government minister or chief executive of any company involved in a scandal or failure will almost invariably accept responsibility for what has gone wrong and resign, rather than make excuses or pass the buck as they do here.

We could learn a great deal from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Robert Readman

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth