Chavs and chav nots

Turn away now if you sat (or marked) an ENA6 paper last month, as Zoe Williams is about to reappear. In her Guardian online column she responds to yesterday's call by the Fabian Society to stop using the word chav. Yes, it's a nasty word, redolent of prejudice and snobbery, but banning words is not a great plan, she reckons.

Meanwhile, one of many responses to the article in yesterday's Guardian about what to do about offensive language in a post-PC world makes the point that Zia Sardur missed out women from his lists of groups susceptible to bigotry. The correspondent says "Although not strictly a "minority", women have been verbally abused since time began. Sadly, vicious insults such as bitch, tart, chick and even whore are increasingly used against us now, after a couple of decades when such words were rarely used. The idea that these references are "ironic" is merely a smoke screen".