even more shamefully, to tar them all with the same ‘chav’ brush is one of the causes of the recent ‘identity shift’ whereby more and more working-class people are defining themselves as middle class (in surveys, about half of those who used to call themselves ‘working class’ no longer do so – a very significant shift). ‘Working class’ has become a more pejorative term, associated with, ironically, people who do not work, so-called ‘benefit scroungers’, ‘chavs’, etc.
