So Obama is in town (NATO Conference Newport)

[Eighteeteewhy]

I'm surprised there's not a thread on this already but at the end of the week Obama, Putin and the rest of the New World Order, sorry NATO are descending on Newport for the largest Conference ever.

A 12 mile 9ft high fence has been erected around the Celtic Manor and 9,500 Police are being shipped in for the two day meeting!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wale...

http://www.nonatonewport.org/



For the last half hour, four of these wee beasties have been doing fly-bys of my house.










@

[P-Jay]

It's a proper pain in the arse to be frank - Cardiff is basically a huge traffic jam at the moment, the kids school is closing early, justification unknown other than "it's NATO", random stop and searches by armed Police all over the place- have they not heard of Skype?

Still, there won't be a blocked drain between Swansea and Newport going unnoticed thanks to the efforts of the BIB and their CCTV.

[bazza white]

Flew over my house heading I guess towards the docks. A huge chopper flew pout of there the other day.

Police everywhere in Cardiff. They have rented a carpark and its rammed full of police vehicles.

Edited by bazza white on Monday 1st September 17:15

[Mattygooner]

I think the fence is there normally to keep the surrounding people out of the Celtic Manor.....

[dandarez]

Now you know the simple, logical answer as to why the Terror alert has been raised.

They ain't worried about us, they're worried about their own skins.
And we should be worried as the 9,000 coppers are all from forces around the UK.

Does that mean the 20 we had in Witney is now none?

All residing at the best hotel in Wales, apparently if you want to stay there it's £2k a night (not sure if that's a double room?).

I can confidently say this hotel has a swimming pool to beats most!


Imagine the tender contract for the fencing.

'Hi, could you put some fencing round our hotel urgently?'
'Yeah, no problem. How much would you estimate, we can do 500 yards quickly?'

'Oh we want a tad more than that... 12 MILES!'

[jmorgan]

How's the peace camp going? Meeting in tent number 1 before they go on the rampage?

[P-Jay]

It's not £2k a night to stay at Celtic Manor - it's a 450 room hotel outside of Newport - it would have gone bankrupt the moment the Ryder Cup ended trying to sell rooms at that rate in it's location. Double rooms are £300rpp but unless you're staying during a big event they're on laterooms etc consistently at £150 a night.

Frankly unless you're a Golf nut it's not 'all that' I've stayed there a few times for work things, it's a nice hotel, but it's not "seven star" Arab Gin Palace fancy.

The fence is pretty impressive, or oppressive depending on if you're impressed by steel fencing or just a little pissed off about having your day-to-day life messed about with for the sake of some pointless PR meeting.

[durbster]

dandarez said:

Now you know the simple, logical answer as to why the Terror alert has been raised.

To be fair, the 7/7 bombings happened while most of the UK's anti-terrorism specialists were out of London watching protestors at another meeting of leaders elsewhere (Scotland was it?).

[Matt..]

I'm in Cardiff, and we've decided to make this the week we move office... to Cardiff Bay, and right next to where all the warships are going to be! It's all very distracting, and quite a spectacle so far. There are apparently going to be 8 warships right outside my office this week.

Don't think i'll be driving in on Thurs/Fri, but am going to walk down just to see what's going on.

[jmorgan]

Anti NATO protestors on the local ITV news at the moment. Not sure they know what they are protesting about.

[Jasandjules]

It's good to know that when they talk about a lack of money they can always find cash for this kind of s**t i.e. saving their own miserable skins.

[rovermorris999]

Funny enough, those Ospreys have been practicing on the range near me recently. I've never seen them before.

[Mojocvh]

jmorgan said:

Anti NATO protestors on the local ITV news at the moment. Not sure they know what they are protesting about.

Bag them up and ship them to E Ukraine then, probably Russian anyway.

[e39darren]

My father in law is a local ( cardiff) police officer and he is spending all this week on standby in one of the sports stadiums with loads of other officers, he's doing 12 hour shifts all food and snacks covered and the overtime he is on is unbelievable, over 3 weeks worth of pay for just this week.
Speaking of the fences in cardiff, he was telling me that each panel is rented at a cost of £9 per day and there are thousands of them.
It's a massive waste imo for what is essentially just a get together for world leaders to eat the finest foods for free, why can't they all have a conference call, I mean if my missus can video call 5 of her friends at the same time on an iphone, why can't they do something similar

[Pesty]

Is there a golf course hear by?

[rovermorris999]

'just a get together for world leaders to eat the finest foods for free'

I wondered why the world's leaders would go to Cardiff. Obama just wanted some bara brith.

[ralphrj]

durbster said:

To be fair, the 7/7 bombings happened while most of the UK's anti-terrorism specialists were out of London watching protestors at another meeting of leaders elsewhere (Scotland was it?).

Correct - G8 Summit at Gleneagles

Eighteeteewhy said:

I'm surprised there's not a thread on this already but at the end of the week Obama, Putin and the rest of the New World Order, sorry NATO are descending on Newport for the largest Conference ever.

I would be surprised if Putin was there.

[rovermorris999]

ralphrj said:

I would be surprised if Putin was there.

I wouldn't be surprised if he was listening in.

[Matt..]

There's the fly past on Friday too. Mig's over Cardiff. Not something I thought I'd ever see!

[Axionknight]

Pesty said:

Is there a golf course hear by?

Yep!