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With Gordon Brown's raid on London Development Agency funds, the capital is getting a taste of the pressures ahead on spending.
It has emerged that the LDA is facing cuts of £22 million over this year and next in order to help pay for the Prime Minister's new housebuilding programme.
The Mayor has written to the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, warning about the potential impact on London's economy.
It is the kind of battle he will have to get used to over the next couple of years.
This is the week when the choices imposed by the Government's ballooning borrowing finally started to come home.
Capital spending will plummet by more than 40 per cent over the next three years, yet Mr Brown wants to build more houses: the money will have to come from elsewhere in a shrinking budget.
Likewise, there have been predictions this week that the £16 billion Crossrail link could be another tempting project for the Treasury to cut.
There, too, Boris Johnson must prepare for a battle royal - and not just with Mr Brown but also with his own party's Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne.
Certainly, the LDA has not done the best job of spending taxpayers' money over the past nine years: billions have been shovelled into it with sometimes feeble results.
But its role in London's recovery will be crucial, and now with better leadership, it needs the funds to do that job. London remains the motor of the UK economy: if national politicians of either main party want the capital to keep on baling out poorer provinces then the last thing they should be doing is hitting our ability to recover. Mr Johnson should make that message loud and clear.
Schools failure
Our interview today with Mrinal Patel highlights the continued shortage of places at good schools in London.
Mrs Patel was threatened with legal action by Harrow council after allegedly cheating in order to get her child a place at the popular Pinner Park First School - the first parent in the country to be treated in this way.
Harrow has now dropped its case; Mrs Patel is sending her child to a private school.
In the week the Government launched a new education White Paper, it is a dilemma all too many London parents will recognise.
For despite grand promises in 1997 and substantial increases in spending since then, this Government has achieved little tangible improvement in school standards.
The competition for places at the highest-performing schools remains as keen as ever: Pinner Park received 411 applications for 90 places this September.
Some failing schools get turned around by inspirational head teachers but overall their league table results remain stubbornly low.
This week's White Paper is largely a reheating of previous announcements, such as provision of extra tuition, and gimmicks such as licensing teachers.
Meanwhile, the policy of encouraging successful schools to expand is often impractical and risks diluting their success. It is hard not to conclude that New Labour's schools reforms have run into the sand.
Harrow's decision to drop proceedings in Mrinal Patel's case is the right one: it would have been a waste of public money to prosecute her. But such ruses will go on while there are not enough good places to go around.
Supreme sacrifice
The death of Lt-Col Rupert Thorneloe in Afghanistan highlights the terrible sacrifices being made by British troops, as the allied effort against the Taliban is ramped up.
The commander of the first battalion Welsh Guards was the most senior British officer to die in combat since 1982; he brings the toll of British dead there since 2001 to 171.
Yet Afghanistan still looks like an open-ended commitment. We need clearer promises from the Prime Minister on where this war is leading - so that brave men like Lt-Col Thorneloe will not be seen to have died in vain.
Reader views (1)
Lt-Col Rupert Thorneloe is a hero. My thoughts go out to his wife and childred. What a shame we have MPs who send these wonderful people into war with WW1 kit
- Rob, Rock Ferry Wirral, 03/07/2009 17:04
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