Hotels In Telford

Netroots Nation Strives To Keep Right Online Away From Next Year's Convention

The organizers of Netroots Nation 2012 are doing their darndest to keep the conservative Right Online conference from horning in on their action.

Netroots is headed to Providence, RI next year -- offering attendees a chance to be close to major cities on the East Coast for less bucks, organizers say -- and, unlike this year's conference in Minneapolis, RightOnline won't be able to crash it.

The conservatives set up their event in the main hotel Netroots attendees were staying in, making for more than a few meetups in the bar and strange dueling welcome banners in the lobby.

The proximity of the two groups led to some interesting unannounced visits to both events.

For Right Online, sponsored by the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the close quarters are all part of the plan.

"We don't just hold conferences quietly," AFP president Tim Phillips said during the opening banquet of this year's RightOnline. "We decided to go where the left was. we found out where Netroots...was and we said, 'we're going to go same city, same weekend, heck, if we can the same hotel.'"

Netroots is less than thrilled. Conference organizer Nolan Treadway told TPM he would prefer RightOnline stayed away.

"Ideally, I'd like AFP not to exist," Treadway said. He said he didn't expect RightOnline to grab the ballrooms in the same hotel so many attendees to his conference were staying in.

"We didn't think they'd book on top of us, really," he said. "Frankly, I probably should have."

In 2012, he said, "we just prefer to have [RightOnline] at arm's length."

To make that happen, Netroots has signed non-compete clauses with the two official Netroots hotels next year -- the Westin Providence and the Providence Biltmore. While that won't keep AFP out of the whole city, Treadway said it should keep them farther away from the Netroots festivities.

"It was more tense than it had to be," Treadway said, referring to the atmosphere in Minneapolis. "People were on edge and there was a lot of distrust among the sides. It wasn't the way we like to do things going forward."

AFP's Erik Telford told the TPM that his group hasn't decided where to put RightOnline next year, but he confirmed that Providence is among the contenders.

"If we decide to go elsewhere it will be for other reasons [beyond the non-compete clause]," Telford. He said that RightOnline has perhaps outgrown the need to be near Netroots, which he said was done to fire up supporters about the power of the online left and draw some earned media.

Telford hotel safety checks » Telford Journal

Concerns over the fire safety of the Buckatree Hall Hotel were raised by Alan Cox, who stayed there for four nights over Christmas.

Mr Cox, who lives in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, is a retired fire fighter and said it was ‘second nature’ to notice the blocked exits after spending four decades fighting fires.

He said: “I worked with the fire brigade for 40 years in Warwickshire and West Midlands, then worked as a fire safety inspector and advisor until I retired. It’s second nature to notice these things when you’ve seen deaths in fires in hotels.

“The fire notice in the bedrooms asks you to make yourself aware of the location of fire alarm call points but when you check they are not in the locations shown on the plan.

“Whenever I stay somewhere I look to find the quickest way out. In the Champagne Suite where we were the main entrance was deadlocked and another was blocked, and there was only one other door you could have gone through. But in an emergency you just head for the nearest exit, and if we had had a fire when I was there it would have been a catastrophe waiting to happen because people wouldn’t have been able to get out.”

Mr Cox said he had mentioned his concerns to the duty manager at the hotel during his stay, but that the problems had not been resolved, prompting him to write to Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service when he returned home.

John Das-Gupta, head of prevention and protection at Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service, said that as soon as he had heard Mr Cox’s concerns a fire safety officer visited the hotel to discuss the issues raised with the manager.

Mr Das-Gupta said: “Following that, our operational staff completed a visit on New Year’s Eve which is in accordance with the many hotel inspections the service carries out. Following these visits the fire safety officer has sent a written report to the general manager highlighting the legal duties required to comply with the fire safety order to ensure the safety of relevant people.”

Buckatree Hall Hotel general manager Rob Nicholson said that he had been happy to discuss the issues raised by Mr Cox with the fire service.

“There wasn’t any problem at all. Everything he noticed were just issues that were there at that particular moment but are not usually there, and when the fire service came they said everything was fine,” he said.

“I understand that the guest who contacted the fire service is a retired fire inspector and does this at every hotel he stays at.

Bulletin with newsweek

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