I SEE supermarkets have taken to referring to their staff as “colleagues”, a term that used to be employed mainly by academics, but also by members of other middle class professions.

Clearly members of the latter professions will now need to find an alternative word to describe their co-workers if they’re to continue to give the impression and bask in the delusion that they’re a cut above the riff-raff, who read low grade tabloids like The Northern Echo rather than the Times or Guardian.

I suggest “PIPACs”, which is short for “Pseudo Intellectual Poseurs and Charlatans”. Or maybe that’s a trifle too derogatory. So I’m open to other suggestions.

Ralph Musgrave, Durham