11/29/11

Orange Price Increased

So Orange sent me a text this morning stating that:

Hi, from Orange. We’re increasing the price of your monthly plan by 4.34% from 8 January 2012. For more information please visit orange.co.uk/planupdate

Other than the rather cheery greeting to pass on some bad news the text didn’t tell me why and so naturally annoyed me…clicking to their link I found this:

Why are Orange introducing these price rises?

We know that price increases are never welcomed by our customers. Unfortunately, with inflation at a 20 year high it has been necessary to increase our monthly service charges.

Can I cancel my contract because you’re increasing my monthly service charge?

No, our Pay Monthly terms and conditions allow us to increase charges by up to the RPI figure in any 12 month period. The increase in the price plan charges is less than the 5.4% rate of inflation as measured by the Retail Price Index (RPI) in October 2011.

We can increase prices at any time on giving proper notice. In this case, the increase is less than the current rate of inflation and our terms and conditions state that we can do this without giving you the right to cancel your contract without paying the disconnection fee.

You’ll find the details in section 4.3 and 15.1 here

This left me wondering several things

1 – How can Orange increase the price I pay?

2 – They never told me that (as I joined over the phone I wasn’t given a contract to sign or even told where to find a copy..perhaps an error on my part for not asking though)

So I phoned up Orange

After waiting 20 minutes to speak to their accounts department due to an unusually high volume of calls (perhaps a flurry of cross customers) I eventually spoke to a man, I calmly explained to him why I was upset by the charges and how unethical it was to do that to loyal customers and he basically told me tough.

With my contract coming to an end in February I thought I’d might as well try to leave so told him I’d do so and I was transferred…

The next person I spoke to was slightly more helpful. She informed me that the increases were due to government inflation increases and that in the past Orange had paid these for the customer but was no longer allowed to by the government. She also told me that Orange were however offering all customers effected a 5% discount for 6 months to offset this and that they would be informed next month by a letter.

Now I’m no business man but why raise your prices, tell your customers who thought they’d signed up for a set contract and pee them off only to send them a letter a month later to say ‘actually it’s ok…it’s on us!’?

Surely it would have made sense to announce both at the same time?

After realising I wasn’t going to get any further without having to spend £50 to get out of my contract and a further £20 to unlock my iPhone I gave up.

Ten minutes later I called back with a plan…

Mention the phrase ‘I’d like a PAC code’(code that allows you to take your number to another network) to any network provider and they usually become very nice and start offering you all sorts to stay.

So I tried that and explained that I was unhappy with my current price plan because I was paying for more than I was using but the other option was too little, explained that I wasn’t planning to upgrade my handset until the iPhone 5 was released and explained my upset at the price increases and Orange have now put me onto a sim-only, one month at a time plan costing me £15 less a month.

On top of that the new plan effectively ends my contract in January rather than February if I so desire.

So…for the cost of a few inclusive minutes I think I did quite well….however I have also made a complain to Ofcom about Orange because I think the clause that allows phone networks to raise your prices in the middle of the contract is ridiculous and unethical and that if it’s going to exist that it should be made a lot clearer when you sign up.

Top Tips!

Finally if you’re an Orange customer also unhappy here’s some tips:

Ring up and complain…feel free to tell them you’ll be complaining to Ofcom…maybe even mention you’ll be tweeting about them!

Don’t be afraid to threaten to leave…even if you get a PAC code you don’t have to use it but asking for one can help you get a better deal

Ask them to confirm the 5% discount if the price hike is all you’re bothered about…the more people who complain the more likely they will be to announce the discount sooner.

Further Reading

Article from Which.co.uk

Article from Money Saving Expert

11/23/11

The Return of Five Iron Frenzy

8 Years ago yesterday a band I barely knew played their last show in Denver, Colorado. That band was Five Iron Frenzy and in the last 8 years they have become one of my favourite bands and had a huge impact on my life. Their mix of fun ska-punk music blended with a mix of beautifully profound or cleverly funny lyrics made them such a good band to listen to.

Five Iron Frenzy had this habit of drawing you into the music and then hitting you with the most profound God-lyric ever! We even had the worship band at our wedding adapt their song ‘World without End’ adapted to be played as a worship song.

Over the last few months the bands website contained a mysterious countdown and their Twitter and Facebook came to life, building hype around something that would happen at 2am this morning (or 7pm in the USA!)…having toyed with the idea of staying up or sleeping through and checking out twitter in the morning I opted in for a 1:55am alarm and hoped that it would be something worth disturbing my sleep for.

And it was!

I’d spent my day telling myself that it would be a greatest hits or rarities album and not a reform or anything new but how wrong was I?

Five Iron Frenzy announced (with a slightly bizarre video of Reese Roper in the desert) that they were getting back together and would be recording a new album (to release in 2013…10 years after their break-up) and possibly playing some shows….oh and they put a new song online!

Now the latter doesn’t excite me as much unless they venture to the UK (I wish!) but the thought of a new album and a chance to hear a new Five Iron song really got me excited. To make this new album the band were asking for pledges in return for a variety of things ranging from a CD of the new album to the band writing you a song…I went for the former and amazingly the band aimed to get $30,000 to make, master and release the album and amazingly they got that within 55 minutes and less than 24 hours later they’re on $80,000.

Turns out I’m not the only one excited about the new Five Iron Frenzy.

I was also pretty excited about the new song titled ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ and it’s so good! It’s like a mix of ‘Electric Boogaloo’ and ‘Our Newest Album Ever’ and I think will please all FIF fans.

So why the blog?

This blog is simply to express my burst of excitement…share the word and tell you to listen to Five Iron Frenzy…they’re amazing and so much fun but also seriously challenging.

Go listen, support and download at: www.fiveironfrenzy.com

Note: I also had a worship blog in mind to write which also included some stuff about FIF so this blog might end up a little FIF obsessed for a week or so!

11/4/11

New Look, New Song and Half Term Recordings

If you’re reading this then you’ve probably noticed there’s been an update to my blog!

Having had the last theme for a while I fancied a change to something a little more creative. This one takes slightly longer to load but I think it’s nice…Hope you like it!

New Song!

Over the last few months I’ve been re-recording, mixing and mastering ‘Escape this Town’ to fix some of the things that slipped through the net last year and I released the first new single from it a few weeks back.

You can download the fully re-mastered track ‘Escape this Town’ for free here or if you’re feeling generous it’s on iTunes and Amazon (You can also listen for free on Spotify)

Geography Rocks EP

Finally in half term Dave came up to stay and we spent 2 days trying to record, mix and master and EP of Dave’s geography songs (which he actually sings to his classes) and we did it!

Geography Songs is available to download here or on iTunes here

They’re pretty catchy and it was great fun to try and do something of good quality in 2 days…and I think we managed it. I also got to play drums and record some bass and guitars on the record.

You can watch a ‘Making of Geography Songs’ video below

The Making of Geography Songs from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

10/23/11

East Riding Youth Summit

Regular readers of my blog will know that a desire to see the church change and to see more young people through the doors are things that I’m passionate about.

A few months ago myself and Lee Kirkby (Youth Minister at Beverley Minster) were having a bit of the grumble about church…if I’m honest even though I’ve made it through youth groups, I’ve trained as a youth worker (and explored theology at university) and I work for a church I still often find church irrelevant…alongside this the lack of 20′s and 30′s in our church is frustrating when I know there are some people of that age range in our village.

The outcome of this grumble with Lee was that we both went away and thought ‘hang on…we should really do something about this rather that just moaning’ and so we have!

Next Saturday from 10am until 1pm at Beverley Minster we’re running the East Riding Youth Summit. An event aimed at getting young people aged 15-25 and church leaders (Ministers, PCC Members etc.) together, joined by the Bishop of Hull to spend some time discussing how the church needs to change to welcome in more young people and what both church leaders and young people can do to influence that.

As a follow-up we’re going to write up everything that’s said into a report format and send it to the young people and to their churches’ PCC’s as a way of saying ‘there were young people from your church at this event and this is what they think about bringing more young people into the church’.

Personally I’m really excited about this event and think it can have a big impact…if you’re in the East Riding come along!

Finally…

I know I don’t usually use this blog for work stuff but this seems to combine work and personal passions…also if you’re interested you can click here to hear me talking about the Youth Summit and young people in the church on BBC Radio Humberside this morning.

09/28/11

Blink 182 – Neighborhoods – Review

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

09/27/11

Fairtrade Maltesers

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

07/13/11

Acoustic Performance Videos

If you’re interested following my post the other day (link to post) here are 2 videos of songs Rob and I performed on Saturday

Not Trying To Say – Live – Written by Mark Tiddy

Mark Tiddy – Not Trying To Say – Live/Acoustic from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

Umbrella – Live – Originally by Rihanna

Mark Tiddy – Umbrella (Cover) – Live/Acoustic from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

07/10/11

Resolution Complete!

I’ve never been a big fan of new years resolutions however set myself just 1 this year and that was simply to do at least 1 gig. The thing is whilst I’ve led worship a variety of times I’ve never played my own stuff live nor really been the solo vocalist but really wanted to begin performing my own stuff.

So last night at the youth event I’m involved with running alongside Luke Leighfield who was headlining and a variety of young people performing myself and Rob did a short acoustic set consisting of covers of Plus 44′s ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’ and Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and we performed an original song called ‘Not Trying To Say’ which I wrote a few months back as part of my ‘Thirteen Months’ project which I wanna start recording next year.

It wasn’t as scary as I expected, we sounded pretty good and hopefully it’ll be the first of many gig-type-things!

Here’s a photo (more here)…there’s also a video someone took which I’ll upload to my YouTube when I get the video

06/21/11

Youth Club to Church – A Journey?

About 4 months ago after much debate as a church we started an open youth club on a Tuesday night. It started with 6 young people and over the past 4 months has grown to an average of about 20 a week…it’s nothing revolutionary…it’s a simple youth club: somewhere to hang out, tuck shop, pool table, table tennis, table football and a Wii but it’s brilliant!

Ethos

The ethos behind the youth club was always to be something run by us as a church and therefore with Christian leaders with the aim of not babysitting but building relationships with the young people we get along. My link in school meant that a lot of the young people recognised me anyway and add into this Christian assemblies which I do and all the young people know I’m a Christian and even ask me why I had an egg smashed on my head (an Easter assembly on sacrifice!).

Bridging the Gap

Of course ultimately it would be fantastic if each of these young people ended up with a relationship with Christ however there is no faith-based input within the youth club other than the occasional conversation based on things that have been left in the hall from church or something I’ve done or said in assembly at school it seems unlikely.

The jump between our unstructured youth club and our faith based groups is huge and so the question that I remain with is:

How will these young people make the jump between coming to a church-run youth club and a relationship with God?

I don’t really have the answers but I do know there are some fantastic inbetween events which I’m hoping to encourage young people along to…by this I mean events which have some Christian input but are perhaps filled with live music or an event at a theme park (such as Alton Tower’s ‘Big Event’ or the Diocese of York and Lightwater Valley’s ‘XLS’). These events seem to provide an opportunity for young people to have a taste of spirituality at the same time as being somewhere exciting and maybe they’re where it’s at (whatever ‘it’ is!).

I guess biblically Jesus didn’t do that much converting just conversing!

Out of the ten guys who Jesus casts demons out of only 1 comes back to say thank you and even then we’re not told that this man gave up his life to Christ and repented of his sins…the woman caught in adultery doesn’t become born-again but is simply told by Jesus to ‘go and sin no-more’.

I wonder if rather than aiming for conversions we should be aiming to build relationships, to show Christ in our own lives, to show love, compassion and care to these young people, to engage them in conversation about faith and to see where their journey leads…I have no doubt from my work in a chaplaincy project in school that young people want to know more about faith and that they’re asking the questions…it’s just a case of whether their asking has to lead to us praying ‘the prayer’ or not?

At a PCC I spoke at for one of the supporting churches of Hunsley Christian Youth Trust I was asked how many people we’d had ‘coming to the LORD’ as a result of the work and the honest answer is none but young people are engaging with questions about faith and hopefully that will ultimately lead somewhere.

I guess the general conclusion might be conversation not conversion!

Anyway those are just some thoughts…comments?

05/3/11

Alternative Vote & Thursday Elections

If you follow me on Twitter then over the last few weeks you’ll have seen several tweets in reference to the alternative vote.

On Thursday we have the opportunity to vote for a new way of voting for politicians in this country and whilst there has been division in all the political parties as to whether it’s a good idea I personally think that it is.

Im not going to turn this into a political post because whilst I’ve read a lot on it I don’t think I have the knowledge to do so however I do know enough to know that the ‘No to AV’ leaflets we’ve received through our door are almost complete works of fiction. Talks of costs, voting machines and making a link between AV and Australia are entirely unhelpful and inaccurate.

However the reason I like AV is that I think it would change the way I vote. With the current system there are realistically 2 choices; conservative or labour and whilst there are a range of other parties I don’t feel (as a voter) that a vote for another party is really worth it…however with AV I’d feel far more comfortable voting for a smaller party. I like the idea that who-ever ends up in power would be wanted by the majority…ok perhaps they might not be every-bodies second choice but they’d certainly be preference to most.

I’m not going to write much more but I will recommend a couple of links…firstly the link below is fantastic at pointing out all the lies that have been told by the No to AV campaign

An A-Z of rubbish arguments from NotoAV

The second thing I recommend you watch is especially good if you’re confused by AV and it’s a short, simple video

Make sure you vote!

Whether you are pro or anti-AV I believe the opportunity we have is a fantastic opportunity to say whether we want our current system or not so if you’re planning to not bother voting please go out and vote! It’s not difficult to find some simple information to help you make a choice so please take this opportunity.

04/19/11

The King Blues: Punk & Poetry Album Review

As I mentioned a couple of days ago I’ve been pretty excited for the release of ‘The King Blues’ new album ‘Punk and Poetry’ which was released yesterday and proving that my HMV pre-order was worthwhile the album turned up yesterday morning and it’s been on in the car, office and living room and I’ve managed to listed to it several times over.

Both of ‘The King Blues’ previous albums have had a political feel about them and ‘Punk and Poetry’ is no different. I guess the obvious comparison is that Punk and Poetry is to the coalition government what NOFX’s ‘War on Errorism’ was to George Bush’s administration.

The King Blues have always had a more acoustic punk feel about them and whilst some of that remains on this album there’s a lot more electric, over-driven guitar giving a real punch to this album and making ‘Punk and Poetry’ a little more edgy than their previous releases.

In terms of lyrics you get exactly what you’d hope from Itch’s writing…passionate, well thought out and challenging lyrics, alongside that the album features a couple of Itch’s poems (with musical accompaniment) including the powerful ’5 Bottles of Shampoo’ which was regularly used as a encore during their tours last year.

A few of the stand out lyrics for me are

‘cut the bankers, cut the police, cut the rich and the riot police. Cut the state and cut the war. But they cut the poor’ from ‘We are f***ing angry’

‘well I’ve seen the rules that you call fair, when it’s profit you keep it but debt we share, the cycle of fear goes around forever, the very idea that we’re in this together’ from ‘Does anybody care about us’

‘Integrity is what black eyes were invented for’, ‘Stuff the man who thinks it’s ok to give his wife a punch, Stuff the judge who says it weren’t rape cos she was drunk’ from ’5 bottles of shampoo’

To be honest picking stand out lyrics is difficult when the whole album is lyrically beautiful and when sung with the passion that Itch puts into the music you can tell that this is an album The King Blues are really genuine with.

Overall Punk and Poetry is a fantastic album, it feels like a progression for ‘The King Blues’ and is simply beautiful both in production, lyrics and sound.

02/28/11

Adoption/Fostering

This article on the BBC News site today details how a Christian couple were denied the opportunity to foster children because they didn’t believe that homosexuality was right (read full article here).

Ignoring the pro or anti homosexuality debate this court ruling is ridiculous!

In this country we are short of people willing to adopt or foster children by tens of thousands and here is a council turning down a couple based on one view that they have.

In my work as a youth worker I’ve met broken young people…young people beaten by their parents, young people introduced to drugs by their parents, young people who’ve stole (as taught by their parents) and plenty more bad habits picked up from their parents which they believe is okay.

To top that off some of those young people have children and you’ve only got to watch the Jeremy Kyle show to see that the cycle keeps on going.

Yet here we have a respectable couple with experience of looking after children being they can’t foster because they don’t agree with homosexuality…seriously if we put the best interest of these children in place rather than calling the thought police then perhaps we’d have more people fostering, more happy children and a few less problems in the world.

Rant over!