Consumed by inexplicable grief over the death of John Gotti, the city's favourite celebrity mobster, New Yorkers may have missed an event far more significant and beneficial. After 13 pages of wallowing in the lonely death of the "dapper Don", the New York Post slipped in a report headed: "Mike Signs Teacher Contract". This concerned an offer made by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the city's teachers couldn't refuse, and that may deliver its 1.1m pupils a brighter future. The contract, which will raise teachers' salaries by as much as 22%, is not, as it might first appear, a case of throwing money at a problem that has patently not been solved by more money in the past. Nor is it evidence of Mr Bloomberg weakly abandoning, in the face of union pressure, one of the most entrenched negotiating positions held by his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani. Rather it is a shrewd piece of deal-making that bodes well for Mr Bloomberg's mayoralty.
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