London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Sep 09, 2025

Violent men are to blame, not Tinder. But online dating comes with risk

Violent men are to blame, not Tinder. But online dating comes with risk

After the horrific murder of Grace Millane, it’s worth reflecting on safety measures for dating

Women, please never feel that you have to be “cool” about dating strangers you meet online.

The killer of Grace Millane has been jailed for life, a minimum of 17 years, for strangling her to death in a hotel room in Auckland, New Zealand, after a Tinder date, the night before her 22nd birthday. Afterwards, the man, whose name has been suppressed, watched porn and took intimate “trophy” photos of the British backpacker. He set up another date for the following day, leaving her body in the hotel room.

When caught, he tried to plead the sinister, increasingly popular, “rough sex gone wrong” defence. (The detective inspector in the case said: “Strangling someone for five to 10 minutes until they die is not rough sex”.) It might seem almost incidental that Millane met her killer online. Maybe it is, maybe not.

Online dating sites have been around for too long for the genie to be put back into the bottle. Nor is it necessary, but do we all need to wake up, just in terms of safety? This isn’t about victim-blaming – only one person was responsible for Millane’s death. Nor is it about morality – I couldn’t care less who people sleep with or how long they’ve known them. This is about women deserving to be safe and how the online dating model fails them, not least by putting a covert pressure on them to casually put themselves at risk.

It could be said that much of the no-strings, arguably male-centric online hooking-up model fails anyone who’s looking for a relationship. But, for now, let’s focus purely on safety. Online dating has effectively normalised risk for women. Chatting online produces a mirage of familiarity where normal rules become blurred, making it easy for people to forget that, when they meet, they’re on a blind date.

Of course, any kind of dating is risky – life is risky – but when it comes to one on one, alone in a room, a woman would usually be physically weaker than a man and therefore less able to fend off an attack. It doesn’t mean that men aren’t sometimes vulnerable, rather that women are nearly always vulnerable – they’re always taking a chance.

However casual the encounter, women need to protect themselves, not just by initially meeting in a public place, but also by listing their locations all the way through and perhaps taking a photo of themselves with their date and storing it online. Don’t apologise, just do it, be upfront and “uncool” about it. If someone doesn’t like it, or calls you paranoid or weird, get out of there.

Men need to start appreciating the huge risks women take with online dating or at least stop diminishing them. Sorry if this comes across as mumsy or prescriptive, but cases like this haunt me; devastated families like the Millanes break me. While there’s nothing wrong with casual sex, don’t be casual about safety.


Stormzy is on a roll with his Greggs card – vegan of course

It must be refreshing for a celebrity to get a freebie that’s useful in an ordinary, delicious way. Rapper Stormzy can’t move for accolades but now that he’s the first person to receive the Greggs concierge black card, he can order “whatever he wants, wherever, whenever”. Posting a film of the invitation and card on social media, Stormzy wrote: “I have peaked, this is brilliant.” Quite. It would appear that the vegan sausage rolls are on Stormzy. Forever. Well done, Greggs – another triumph.

The concierge scheme is by invitation only and similar to the Nando’s card, which allows celebrities to take up to five guests to restaurants free. It seems to be in response to Stormzy previously professing himself to be a Greggs fan, while moaning that they wouldn’t deliver. Delivery problem solved, though only for Stormzy.

For health reasons (finger wag!), people shouldn’t eat Greggs all the time, but I’m sure Stormzy wouldn’t do that anyway. Otherwise, while this story is about the successful interlocking of brands – high street and streetwise – it goes beyond thatthan that. One reason why I like Stormzy is that he surrounds himself with genuine good friends and insists they’re treated with respect, to the point where he once walked out of a festival when he felt his friends had received racist treatment. I like the thought of him and his crew fancying a Greggs and Stormzy pulling out the concierge card.

In Stormzy’s position, the bombardment of freebies must be brilliant but, just occasionally, exhausting? When you hear about the Oscars’ gift bags, with vouchers for plastic surgery clinics, it could even seem full-on depressing. The Greggs card sorts out a quick bite for Stormzy and his friends – sometimes, what could be sweeter?


Bloom won’t be the last to suffer a tattoo bloomer

Actor Orlando Bloom has had to revise a tattoo – instead of spelling out his son’s name Flynn in morse code, it ended up as Frynn. A dot was missing and Bloom dealt with the mistake with humour: “Finally dot it right.”

It’s sweet that Bloom wishes to do this for his son, but also… why? It reminds me of people going to places such as Goa, getting carried away and returning with weird scrawling over their limbs. Often, it’s some meaningful quote in Sanskrit, or so they hope. It could easily be “leave my country, irritating tourist” in fluent Konkani.

Bloom isn’t the only celebrity to suffer an ink disaster: Ariana Grande wanted her 7 Rings lyrics written in Japanese on her arm and ended up with “small charcoal grill”. Generally, isn’t an illustration less risky?

Even if the writing is accurate, who wants to live their entire life by something they believed on a youthful beach holiday while wearing braided ankle bracelets and harem pants? In these meme-infested times, what inscription has any hope of remaining meaningful and not lumped in with all that yoga-hippy “believe in yourself” drivel on social media?

The moral of the tale seems to be: if you must get a dodgy tat, get an image.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Murdoch Family Finalises $3.3 Billion Succession Pact, Ensuring Eldest Son’s Leadership
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Court Staff Cover Up Banksy Image of Judge Beating a Protester
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
Elon Musk Poised to Become First Trillionaire Under Ambitious Tesla Pay Plan
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
Burning the Minister’s House Helped Protesters to Win Justice: Prabowo Fires Finance Minister in Wake of Indonesia Protests
Brazil Braces for Fallout from Bolsonaro Trial by corrupted judge
The Country That Got Too Rich? Public Spending Dominates Norway Election
Nearly 40 Years Later: Nike Changes the Legendary Slogan Just Do It
Generations Born After 1939 Unlikely to Reach Age One Hundred, New Study Finds
End to a four-year manhunt in New Zealand: the father who abducted his children to the forests was killed, the three siblings were found
Germany Suspends Debt Rules, Funnels €500 Billion Toward Military and Proxy War Strategy
EU Prepares for War
BMW Eyes Growth in China with New All‑Electric Neue Klasse Lineup
Trump Threatens Retaliatory Tariffs After EU Imposes €2.95 Billion Fine on Google
Tesla Board Proposes Unprecedented One-Trillion-Dollar Performance Package for Elon Musk
US Justice Department Launches Criminal Mortgage-Fraud Probe into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
Escalating Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America: A Growing Crisis
US and Taiwanese Defence Officials Held Secret Talks in Alaska
Report: Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission in North Korea Ordered by Trump in 2019 Ended in Failure
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Florida Murder Case: The Adelson Family, the Killing of Dan Markel, and the Trial of Donna Adelson
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Big Tech Executives Laud Trump at White House Dinner, Unveil Massive U.S. Investments
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
‘Looks Like a Wig’: Online Users Express Concern Over Kate Middleton
Brand-New $1 Million Yacht Sinks Just Fifteen Minutes After Maiden Launch in Turkey
Here’s What the FBI Seized in John Bolton Raid — and the Legal Risks He Faces
Florida’s Vaccine Revolution: DeSantis Declares War on Mandates
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
"The Situation Has Never Been This Bad": The Fall of PepsiCo
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
The Fashion Designer Who Became an Italian Symbol: Giorgio Armani Has Died at 91
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Queen Camilla’s Teenage Courage: Fended Off Attempted Assault on London Train, New Biography Reveals
Scottish Brothers Set Record in Historic Pacific Row
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Court of Appeal Allows Asylum Seekers to Remain at Essex Hotel Amid Local Tax Boycott Threats
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
×