First of all let me say that this is a hill I’m willing to die on. In fact, when I hit “publish” and Starmer’s thought police inevitably come knocking on my door, I will proudly tell them that I regret none of what I’m about to write. My goal with this article is to divide my readers into two groups: the ones who love austerity (most of you will fall into this category by the time I’m done brainwashing you) and the ones who never have, and never will, understand the intricacies of primary school maths. Let’s start with a definition: what is austerity? Austerity is a broad term used to refer to policies that reduce the deficit/debt of a country, either via spending cuts, increased taxation, or both. The objective is to drive the deficit (and ultimately the debt) down, something that can hardly be argued is a bad thing to do, especially in countries that face the challenges of a rapidly ageing population. Quick note for everyone: the deficit is the difference between what the state...
Today we are going to make Italians mad. And no, we will not be breaking spaghetti – something that my Italian family has been doing for generations, no, centuries, before TikTok videos started circulating claiming that Italians don’t break spaghetti. We do, in fact, break our spaghetti, just like any sane person with a functioning brain would do when the spaghetti clearly doesn't fit into the pot. I actually used to sometimes not break my spaghetti, but now I always do so out of spite: it gives me both physical and emotional pleasure to know that the Italian gods are frowning upon my heartless breaking of spaghetti. As much as I would love to talk about how only people living in a hopeless country could get brutally angry about other people’s freedom to break spaghetti, and how this relates to Italy still being a fundamentally fascist-loving country at heart, the topic I suggest for today is the following: the link between Italians loving the big state and Italy having experienc...