Cuts, budgets, debts. These three are words you're at the very least likely to hear if you live in a neoliberal-governed country. Nowadays, potentially anywhere in the world. Cuts, budgets and debts at the expense of the medium and the poor. Over the last years, UK citizens (and many more all around the globe) have had to face the brutality of having no means to survive, whereas what was supposed to take care of them, let's just call it "the Government", had been repeatedly weakened by cuts, budgets and debts.
This is a really brief description of what it takes to live under the rules of neo-liberalism, which eventually leads to the medium taking on the poor, and the poor taking on the poorer. Is there anything we can do to stop this ongoing (as well as saddening) situation?
We can start by crowd-funding - buying t-shirts and pre-sale DVD here - Lost Dog, a diy film that points out the condition which disabled people of the UK have to face on a daily basis: cut government aids and funds, in addition to the increasing rate of hate crimes against them, leading to a loss of dignity and more generally of rights. Starring Jamie Beddard as Icky and Jason Williamson as Robbo, and directed by Andrew Tiernan, Lost Dog tells the story of two friends, one of which (Icky) is a disabled person made homeless by the Disability Benefit and Independent Living Fund Cuts. After being attacked in the town centre, Icky asks Robbo for help. Robbo decides to stand for his friend.
Jason Williamson is also known as Sleaford Mods frontman. Sleaford Mods are a band, but most specifically are an artistic reaction to austerity, expressing anger, addressing fear and hunger. Merely branding them as «political» could possibly bother them, although you can definitely hear words as «Boris Johnson», «David Cameron» and «UKIP» throughout their records, usually related to some sort of «disgrace». Sleaford Mods, a band of two, Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson from Nottingham, are not devoted to the Labour Party though. And how could they be, taking into account the existence of Tony Blair.
They play «electronic munt minimalist punk-hop rants for the working class», and not only address «austerity dogs», Fearn and Williamson also raise their voice in order to voice the «Invisible Britain» of jobseeking, dealing with employers and managers, alienation, isolation and many more among the issues neoliberalism and crisis have engulfed us in. «Jobseeker, can of Strongbow I'm a mess / desperately clutching onto a leaflet on depression / supplied to me by the NHS», this line, off their track "Jobseeker", probably sums up the way they address many of those issues.
Starved to death, starving from unemployment, cut government aids and even lack of understanding, the UK has been (un)expectedly led to Brexit, which is just going to enrich the rich and keep starving the poor. Therefore hate and fear are going to take on the weak even more, be it disabled people or immigrants. However, it is not about categorizing people, because we are talking about human beings, whatever you are labeled as.
That is why we need Lost Dog now more than ever, even as a chance to stand together, crowd-funding the movie. And this is the least we can do to voice the unvoiced, just as Sleaford Mods do, because «we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us», Jo Cox would say.
