Some nobody writes in the Guardian Stop laughing and don't use the word 'chav'.
His contention is that it's just middle-class sneeriness at poor people.
No it isn't. He has compassion for all those poor working class people who can't afford proper designer gear. Well, it may be news to him on his bloated 'journalist's' salary, but most middle class people can't.
He criticises journalists who probably have never even sat next to a chav on a bus. Well, that may well be true, but it wasn't journalists that coined the phrase. It was ordinary middle-class people who also don't sit next to chavs on the bus, because chavs, like journalists, don't use the buses. On the other hand, middle class people and poor people use the buses.
The derision of chavs is based on derision of a lifestyle choice not on a life situation. When I first started blogging I came across the term 'council' or, in Scotland, 'schemey', which is far more offensive, implying a wholescale sneer of the millions of people who live in social housing.
Sneering at loud-in-yer-face tasteless chavs is a perfectly reasonable reaction to some increasingly dated belief that all taste is of the same value.
His argument seems to be that you mustn't criticise McDonalds for being sugar-and chemical-filled junk food because it's equally valid with nutritious whole food, and, besides, it's what poor people eat. Despite not knowing the cost of a McDonalds burger nor the disposable income of poor people.
That having been said, the word 'chav' is so 2004 and it's time that the newspapers realise that those at the cutting edge have stopped using it.
