Why is the term "chav" so controversial in the UK?

[pampango]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13626046

For some it has been a satisfying label to pin on Burberry check-wearing louts. But for others, it's a nasty, coded attack on the working class. And for some commentators the word chav is now at the heart of Britain's obsession with class.

There are plenty of people for whom the word is harmless. Daily Telegraph blogger James Delingpole argues it's a harmless updating of "oik".

But more left-leaning commentators have seen it as shorthand for bashing the poor. In 2008 the Fabian Society urged the BBC to put it on their list of offensive terms. "This is middle class hatred of the white working class, pure and simple," wrote Tom Hampsen, the society's editorial director. He also called on the Commission for Equality and Human Rights to take this kind of class discrimination seriously.

Now a new book - Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class - argues the word is a coded attack on the poor. "As inequality has widened it's a way of people saying that the people at the bottom deserve to be there," says Owen Jones, the book's author.