Mark Tiddy
Website of Mark Tiddy | Musician, Christian, Youth Worker

Like many people I remember where I was when I heard the news of big events…I remember where I was when Princess Diana died and when September 11th happened.

I also remember where I was when I heard the news of Blink 182′s Indefinate Hiatus back in 2005 (not that this is anywhere near has tragic as the 2 previously mentioned events).

I was in Sixth Form, working at a computer (or at least pretending too) when a friend who had the same love for their music linked me to this article on the MTV site.

I remember at the time feeling really quite sad…the thing is somewhere along the lines in my discovery of pop-punk Blink 182 had become (and if I’m honest probably still are) my favourite band.

It was listening to Blink 182 that inspired me to learn the guitar and their song ‘Dammit’ was the first that I’d learnt…even now I pretty much never bother to learn songs on guitar but can play at least 7 Blink tracks. The music of Blink 182 may not be the most musically or lyrically challenging but there’s something about it that I love.

The follow-up of the Blink break-up led to Tom forming ‘Angels and Airwaves’ and releasing 3 albums (4th this November) and Mark & Travis going on to form Plus 44…I followed and love both bands but they’re not Blink 182.

So when Blink 182 announced that they were reforming and that they’d put aside their problems around Travis’ hospital bed (after a plane crash) I was excited and the last 2 years as Blink 182 have been writing and recording their album I’ve got gradually more excited about it.

Anyway onto the album…

Neighborhoods was released on Monday in the UK in 2 formats…a normal edition and a deluxe edition (which Mark Hoppus counts as the actual album). The deluxe edition has 14 tracks and the latter ones are certainly worth having!

In previous interviews Hoppus had stated that they were all bringing what they’d been doing in their time outside of Blink 182 into the Blink 182 music and that’s the feel of the album.

Neighborhoods feels like it continues where their self-titled album left off but without as much production and so there is more of a punk rock feel to this album with the lyrical maturity that Blink 182 reinvented themselves with self titled.

The album opens with ‘Ghost on the Dance Floor, a catchy Angels & Airwaves-esque track with Tom’s vocals giving you the feeling that Blink 182 is really back!

The whole album seems to mix the Blink 182 pop-punk sound with some of the darker sounds of Plus 44 and more stadium-rock style sounds of Angels and Airwaves and it seems to all fit together very well…lyrically it’s a pretty dark album (but with all the stuff that’s happened since the Blink 182 break-up who can blame them!) and it works.

Some of my personal favourites on the album so far…

Ghosts on the Dance Floor – It’s good fun, a fantastic album opener and so catchy I woke up with it in my head yesterday morning!

After Midnight - For me this song represents Blink 182 past, present and future…Tom’s vocals in the verse with a very Angels and Airwaves guitar and Mark taking over in the chorus with a heavier feel makes this song everything you’d want from a Blink 182 song!

Hearts All Gone – This song feels a lot more like punk-rock and is probably best compared to ‘My First Punk Song’ off the Boxcar Racer album although totally different lyrically and in length. Hoppus’ punchy vocals and Barker’s agressive drums make this song awesome!

Kaleidoscope – This song reminds me so much of some of the more mellow Plus 44 songs like ‘Little Death’ and ‘Weatherman’. There’s something about the sort of lyrics that Mark Hoppus writes for these songs that’s brilliant.

Even if she Falls - This song is the last song on the deluxe edition and I’m amazed it’s not on the normal version. It’s a very Blink 182 song very similar to some of the more simple songs on their self titled album. The whole song is just Tom on vocals but it works really well with his lower verse vocals and higher chorus vocals making it a fantastic end to the album.

Are Blink 182 back on form?

The brave step that Blink 182 took with Self-Titled was to re-invent themselves and move on to more serious music and as they return with Neighborhoods 8 years later with all of the band having done a variety of projects Neighborhoods is everything I’d hoped for as a Blink 182 fan, it’s catchy, it has the best of Plus 44 and Angels & Airwaves blended with Blink 182 and is definitely worth buying…but make sure you buy the deluxe edition.

If you’re not convinced by my pro-Blink ramblings you can stream the entire album here

Today the Fairtrade foundation and Mars chocolates have made the exciting announcement that next year Maltesers will go Fairtrade.

This is especially exciting as the last thing I’d heard (over a year ago) was that Mars were signing up to Rainforest Alliance and certified Cocoa and not Fairtrade but the press release today suggests this is just a step to making more products Fairtrade (rather than Nestle’s ‘token fairtrade product’ nonsense).

Hopefully Mars will follow in the footsteps of Cadburys in expanding their Fairtrade range…I’m looking forward to a Fairtrade Mars bar!

Which Fairtrade Mars product would you like to see? Why not click here to contact Mars and suggest a product you’d like to see Fairtrade.

Here’s an exert from the press release. You can read the full release here

LONDON, UK (27 September 2011) — Mars Chocolate and Fairtrade International today announced an agreement to introduce the first Fairtrade labelled Mars product. As part of the initial phase of the agreement the first Mars product to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark will be MALTESERS®. The move, which will appear in stores in 2012 in the UK and Ireland, will contribute in excess of US $1 million in annual Fairtrade Premium funds for cocoa farmers to invest in their farms, business organisations and communities. MALTESERS® is the third biggest confectionery brand in the UK, and its switch will  represent more than a 10% increase in total UK Fairtrade sales.  (see Note 3 in Fairtrade Foundation section below).

At the heart of the agreement is a shared ambition to make commodity certification that supports sustainable livelihoods for farmers the norm in the cocoa industry. Over the long-term, Mars will explore how best to scale up its purchases of Fairtrade cocoa, and will support Fairtrade’s continued efforts to develop measures that would allow more confectionery companies to increase their commitments to purchase more Fairtrade cocoa with the aim of impacting the lives of more cocoa farmers than ever before.

This blog will also appear on my new Ethical Living UK blog – Read the ethical blog here

So it was the turn of Morrissons to receive an e-mail from me. Much like Sainsburys the response came quickly (unlike McDonalds who I e-mailed a month ago asking why they have Fairtrade coffee in Switzerland but not the UK and have had no reply)

Here’s what I e-mailed:

Hello, When shopping in your store today in Brough and looking for hot chocolate I noticed that you are now the only supermarket not to have made their own brand hot chocolate Fairtrade. Is this something you are working on in the future? What is your policy towards making more of your own brand products Fairtrade? Thank You

And here’s their reply…

Thank you for contacting us regarding the Fair Trade products which we sell in our stores.

Morrisons were among the first major food retailers to sell fairly traded goods in 1994, including those of our own Morrisons label. Our current range includes tea, coffee, chocolate and bananas, and I am delighted to report that the company actually increased the number of Fair Trade products in the range by 27% in 2008, and we are continuing our efforts to expand the range further. For example, we have recently introduced 10 varieties of own-brand Fair Trade Ground Coffee. We also offer Fair Trade tea and coffee in our customer cafés.

In addition to selling ‘Fair Trade’ we have also have implemented our own Ethical Trading Code with suppliers in countries such as Asia and South America. The Code is designed to protect the rights of employees and covers areas such as employment being freely chosen, freedom of association, safety and hygiene, payment of living wages, working hours, and the prevention of discrimination and inhumane treatment. We were also the first major UK retailer to implement an inspection initiative with Fair Working Conditions (FWC), an organisation promoting, measuring and formally accrediting best employment practices worldwide.

In conclusion, we are firm supporters of fair-trade and are currently offering our support wherever possible.

Thank you once again for taking the time and trouble to write to us. We find feedback on such issues immensely valuable in our efforts to improve the products and services we offer.

For further information regarding our policy on Ethical Trading or any of our current policies please visit our website link http://www.morrisons.co.uk/Corporate/Corporate-Responsibility-2011/Policy-Guidance/ and there you will find our Policy Guidance list. From there you can also down load our full CR review which you may find useful.

The link they posted makes interesting reading…looks like they’re heading in the right direction.

So for the last few years I’ve been sold to the world of Apple…not because of the hype but because it works. Despite what others say the operating system (once you adapt) is far easier to use and far more logical than Windows and especially for the web-design, music creation, video editing, extreme multi-tasking and variety of things I do on my laptop my Mac beats Windows every time…add into the mix that I restart maybe once every 2 weeks and have never re-installed my operating system compared to a daily restart from Windows and at least a re-install every year or so I have to say I like my Mac a lot.

That said because of the amount of Windows users I know it’s inevitable that I will at some point be sat on the latest version of Windows as I fix something for someone. I left Windows at XP and so it’s took me a while to get used to Vista and in turn 7 when I’ve had to use them mostly because things have had their names changed for the hell of it (seriously Microsoft…why re-name everything in control panal?).

So when Microsoft announced the release of a developer preview of Windows 8 I thought I’d download it and install it as a virtual machine on my Mac and I’m really not impressed.

When Apple released OS X Lion in July they talked about it taking the features that worked from their mobile devices and bring them to Mac and generally features like opening a programme where you left it, Mission Control and the optional ‘Launchpad‘ are very nice and good features to move from mobile to computer.

However Microsoft’s attempt is a bit of a fail!

The installation for Windows 8 is quick and easy and that’s always nice however it all goes downhill from there. When you first login you are greeted with the screen pictured at the top of this blog. On one hand it looks modern and clean but on the other it looks like someone’s simply played around with squares and text boxes in publisher!

Then you come to the desktop (pictured right) which looks pretty much the same as Windows 7 (ignore the black bar at the top it’s from my virtual machine programme and not Windows 8). The only real change is the shape of the start bar which has lots it’s circular shape and dimensions added in Vista and gone back to being square and flat…which is a shame cos the circular bit was probably the nicest change that came in with Vista!

The only other change is to the Windows which look more like the style of Microsoft Office which is nice because it keeps things consistant.

However here is the real reason I think Windows 8 is the worst operating system I’ve ever used…

Windows is known for being the most widely used operating system. Minus a few name changes you can go between versions of Windows no problem. Even after not using a Windows OS for 3 years I can stil go on the latest version and understand how to use it…but not so with Windows 8.

The new programs are difficult to exit (I have no idea how to close the control panal or twitter apps I’ve opened) and I had to google how to shut down! 

The shut down process in Windows 8 requires hovering in the big screen start menu until a start thing appears and clicking through 2 menus to find the word ‘Shut Down’….why? Why not just put a ‘Shut Down’ button in the start menu? If I have to google how to shut down a computer when I’ve used them my whole like how is this going to be accessible to someone who isn’t?

Windows 8 is awful. Whilst I know this is a developer preview and therefore not complete or maybe even how it’s going to look I think it’s difficult to use, non-user-friendly and the contrast in styles between the new start menu and the desktop is inconsistant.

I’m keeping my Mac…or Windows XP!

(I fully appreciate that Mr Jones will disagree with this entire post!!!)

Recently we’ve tried shopping at Sainsburys*. If you didn’t know Sainsburys are the biggest stockest of Fairtrade (and also the most ethical of the big 4) in the UK and really simple things like basics (33p a box) tea bags are Fairtrade plus their own brand chocolate and alongside this there’s all sorts of other Fairtrade products cropping up throughout however a lack of fairtrade chocolate biscuit (KitKat type things…other than the Fairtrade Kitkat which is stupid and shouldn’t be purchased – Blog 1 on this & blog 2) and so I dropped them a message which suggested the that they consider making their Double-Take biscuit things Fairtrade or stock Tradecraft’s super-tasty ‘Fair Break’ bars and less than 24 hours after my e-mail here’s their response:

Dear Mark

Thanks for your email about our Fairtrade products.  I’m glad to hear that you’ve been impressed to see a wider range of Fairtrade products in our stores, including our own brand chocolate.

We currently offer over 800 Fairtrade products across our stores.  We’re constantly looking for new ways we can convert more of our products to Fairtrade suppliers, but with over 30,000 products for sale in store and online you’ll understand that this takes time.  We want to make sure that the suppliers are genuinely paid a fair wage for their produce and their working conditions are good, and it takes some time to make sure that this is the case before we start selling any of their products.

We stock over 30,000 products so we can’t possibly have every requested item in all our branches, however if there is a high enough demand for an individual item, we will always strive to find space for it on our shelves.  With this in mind I’ve passed your request to our buyers who will look into the feasibility of stocking Tradecrafts fair break chocolate biscuit bars in our stores.  Your suggestion that we convert our Double take chocolate wafer biscuits to Fairtrade has been logged on to our system and this will be passed on to the relevant department for consideration.

We’re grateful to you for contacting us as your feedback helps us to understand the needs of our customers better.  We look forward to seeing you in store again soon.

The point is this blog is to encourage you to e-mail your supermarket (whichever you choose) about making more products Fairtrade. Give specific examples of products you currently buy which you’d like to see Fairtrade and encourage them to stock more Fairtrade (E.g. when Cadbury made Dairy Milk Fairtrade ASDA removed Divine from their shelves…Sainsbury’s has divine side by side with their own brand and Cadbury!).

Oh and I know my blog has been pretty quiet lately…we’ve been on holiday and I’ve been busy with a little project which I’ll blog on soon!

* Sainsburys – If you’ve bothered to read this * then perhaps you’ve thought that Sainsburys expensive…well actually I don’t think that’s true…Tesco have been sneaking up their prices and still ride on the back of their reputation for being cheap from the 90′s, ASDA are cheap but some of their Smart Price products lack quality whereas often Sainsbury’s Basics range is the same quality (or better) as ASDA’s own brand/’Chosen By You’…In comparison to Morrissons they’re about the same…oh and naturally cheaper than Waitrose!