When in Spring 2010 ‘austerity’ began to re-appear on the European landscape as a concept  populating the headlines of newspapers and official documents to account for the massive cuts on public spending that European governments were just about to devise  not many  perhaps  had seriously considered the whole range of meanings that the term might imply for and disclose to European citizens  with its references to a ‘sternness’ and ‘severity’ of lifestyle  and  above all  to the ‘inessential’ that needs to be violently cast off from ‘public’ and ‘private’ life