French authorities in Nice and nearby Cannes appear to have been unnecessarily heavy handed in imposing a ‘burkini ban‘  on their beaches in the wake of the Nice attack.

Images of four armed policeman standing over a lone woman while forcing her to remove her clothing do not make great PR for the Gendarmerie.

Why are only male officers attending the scene?

Why didn’t they just escort her from the beach rather than insist she strip?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the burkini ban, more thought and sensitivity is required in its imposition.

SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.