The demographer Bernard Salt has been documenting Australia's "man drought" for several years now.

It seems to be a national problem. And nowhere is it more apparent than in big Australian cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. In these urban areas young single women outnumber available men to a significant degree.

An enterprising woman called Brie Peterson has seen the potential that such a demographic imbalance creates and has begun sending groups of urban women on rural tours in which they meet the local blokes. As this article describes:

The weekend tours, named Thank Goodness He's A Country Boy, involve eight hours of intensive speed dating at a country pub, where lonely farmers are introduced to single city girls.

More information about how the tours are run can be found at the business's website.

Although it's seen as a bit politically incorrect these days to say that various nations have dominant and very different attitudes to sex and relationships, the belief still persists. One distinction that journalists often make whenever there's a political sex scandal involving infidelity in Britain or the USA is how such things wouldn't bother the French, who are much more relaxed about such matters. It certainly sounds plausible, but they never seem to cite any statistics backing up this assertion.

They might start to do this now, however, since there are some figures available that strongly confirm this belief. Popular international dating community Zoosk conducted a massive survey with almost 13000 of its members, quizzing them on their attitudes to relationship morality.

In line with the stereotype the French respondents were the least concerned with their leaders' sex lives, with 4 out of 5 singles saying they wouldn't care if a politician were unfaithful. Those in America were far more judgmental, however.

The survey turned up lots of other interesting insights into various national attitudes to infidelity. Some of these confirm old stereotypes, while others contradict them.

The free dating site Oasis Active now appears to be pulling ahead of all the others in Australia, with over a million local members. The parent company Oasis has similar sites in other countries that are also hugely successful.

Interestingly, this isn't the only Aussie owned online dating company that is branching out overseas. The Queensland based Cupid Media has been going for over a decade and has 33 niche dating sites, many of them country specific. One of these is for Russian singles and has recently hit the one million member mark.