Apparently as many as 200,000 people may have been persuaded last year to give money to fraudsters using false identities to pursue relationships with them. But because of the shame victims feel, fewer than 600 cases were reported.

The fraudsters, usually tied to organised crime and based outside the UK, often use pictures of models when making contact with their victims on dating sites and then act swiftly to move the ‘relationship’ away from the monitored sites to personal online services such as private email accounts to carry out the fraud. This would usually be claiming to be in need of urgent funds and asking for loans of money, or involving their victims in money laundering by asking them to accept payments in their bank accounts.

Recent research carried out by Leicester University – the first to measure the scale of this relatively new crime – found that in a YouGov poll of more than 2,000 British adults, one in every 50 knew a victim.

Of course it seems hard to imagine anyone handing over money to someone they’ve never met in person but these scammers are highly skilled in the art of manipulating vulnerable people.

Although awareness of online romance scams is increasing, millions of people in the UK remain at risk and the psychological impact experienced by victims can be considerable, even leading to suicide in some cases.

Of course there are plenty of people signed up to internet dating and social networking sites, who are genuinely seeking friendship or romance, but it can take time, a degree of nous and good luck to find the right people. Introduction agencies recommended by the Association of British Introduction Agencies (www.abia.org.uk) will have already screened members so are a much safer bet for those looking to find love or new friendships.    To find out more about the sort of people you can meet through Classical Partners, see http://www.classicalpartners.co.uk/Member-profiles.html

Fortunately, money is not everything. Professor Shira Gabriel in her paper “suggests that the events that end up being most important in our lives, the events that bring us the most happiness and also carry the potential for the most pain, are social events – moments of connecting to others and feeling their connections to us….. It was not independent events or individual achievements like winning awards or completing tasks that affected participants the most, but the moments when close relationships began or ended; when people fell in love or found a new friend; when a loved one died or broke their hearts.  In short, it was the moments of connecting to others that touched peoples’ lives the most.”

I have always known that humans are social animals. Professor Gabriel has now shown that we humans experience our most intense experiences when we interact with other individuals. It follows then that to increase our happiness we need to get out there and meet others. So if you are single start dating, expand your social circle, perhaps find a soulmate – and make your life more fulfilling.

Recently there has been a lot written in the press about women who are increasingly finding that feminist ideas and legislation are actually holding them back rather than helping them as they were intended to. Feminism was supposed to liberate women and allow them to make all the choices in their lives on their own merits. However they are now finding that sometimes this ideal itself actually has the opposite effect. It is now illegal to ask a women in a job interview if she plans to have a family. Fair enough, but employers know this so don’t ask and women who have no intention of having a family do not get the chance to say so and the employer hires the man as it is less risky for them.

All forms of equality legislation almost by definition have a flip side that encourages positive discrimination. The obvious end-point of positive discrimination is mediocrity and I for one do not want to live in a mediocre world.

What has this got to do with Classical Partners, well, we sometimes meet people with pre-concieved ideas which are getting in their way of finding what they want. These pre-concieved ideas are their prejudices and there is no way we can legislate against them. What we can try and do is educate them to find a better way.

I think it is exactly the same with the proposed equality bill. Learn from the mistakes of feminism and instead of legislating try educating.