Before I got distracted by the spike in viewing figures, discussed in a previous post, I’d logged in to comment on the following story. It appears that members of the Saudi royal family have ordered the closure of a French naturist beach ‘for their security’.
One needs to be exceptionally careful with the Daily Mail, a paper that will do anything it can to demonise Muslims. As a result, it reports that the closure (of a public, municipal beach) is for ‘security reasons’, with its readers then given free reign to comment on how the real reason might be the nudity and how this shows that western values can be trumped by money.
The Saudi royal family own the villa next to the beach, of course, and have every right to stay there within the house and grounds of their own property. But as they’ve owned the property since 1979 and the concept of ‘security’ is now only becoming an issue, once suspects that ‘politics’ is playing a key part in this. How might the closure of a beach on which, let’s face it, users are unlikely to be carrying anything concealed, improve the security? And what ever happened to the spirit of the French Revolution? Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite? Some people would appear to be more free if they’ve got wads of cash to make things happen, and the French seem ready to set aside the tenets of their Revolution in order to do politics. How might bending over backwards to Saudi Arabia, for example, fuel the sales of French fighter jets?
The Daily Telegraph has been reporting this too, and surprisingly is a little more candid about the reasons for the closure. It is, according to locals, to allow the Saudi Royals to have the beach to themselves. Ah! So it’s not security? It’s not even the presence of naturists? It’s money, power and a replication of the reasons as to why Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off.
Ella
the sl naturist 
This is a very important post Ella.
And unbelievable bullshit. It proves that in modern society money trumps everything. Extremely sad.
If they don’t like a nudist beach that they have looked onto for almost 40 years, then why don’t they move. Unbelievable.
Finn, I’d have imagined that ‘security’ means keeping things as secret as possible. Before now, few of us in the wider world would have known of the Royal Family’s ownership of the house or presence in it. And now, by riding roughshod over locals, large parts of the globe know where the King spends his summer holidays. It even seems counter-productive on a security level, regardless of wealth and power.
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