The Chubby Cat Blog

Democracy, as we know, can be tricky.  Churchill’s famous quote on democracy is so overused that it has become almost a cliché,  but it is ...

“Every block of stone has statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.   I saw the angel in the marble and carved un...

Joseph Chamberlain is the embodiment of 19 th Century municipalism and his name is often cited as an example to modern localists. As such...

Chubby Cat's blogs will be a little less frequent for a while and will be focused away from the world of local government finance while...

The City of Stockton, California, lies about eighty miles west of San Francisco.   One of the largest municipalities in the...

In the lead up and the immediate aftermath, there was a lot of talk about whether the annual set-piece Budget statement by ...

I have spent the last few days in Scotland, where on Wednesday First Minister Alex Salmond announced the date of the indepe...