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Every so often politicians pop up to tell us that we are living in a classless society. They inevitably cite socio-economic statistics to prove their point. Similarly, newspapers quote similar surveys in order to lay claim to broad readerships in the hope of improving advertising volumes.
The Sun, for example, loves to point out that more than 37 per cent of its regular audience is drawn from the most affluent sector of the population, ABC1, which means it has more upscale readers than The Times. Indeed, it has more of these readers than any other national daily with the exception of the Daily Mail.
What it doesn't tend to point out, however, is that 62 per cent of its readership is therefore drawn from the supposedly lower classes, delineated as C2DE, and it has more of these readers than any other national title except for the News of the World.
Some people are amazed when I tell them about The Sun's upmarket readers, but I go on to explain that the measurement of newspaper audiences by traditional socioeconomic class categories in 21st century post-industrial Britain is wholly inadequate. It is a crude way of targeting consumers, and it takes no account of educational attainment. C1s, for instance, are a very elastic category.
I am reminded by this fact as The Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch's News International, makes a concerted push to attract new readers by slashing its price in the London region from 35p to 20p. It is also employing 100 street vendors to coax more people to buy the cheaper Sun. At the same time, the company has raised the cover price of The Times, from 65p to 70p.
One message is obvious. The Times is no longer going to seek to maximise its audience through price cuts, a reversal in a policy which began in 1993 when Murdoch first launched his price war by allowing The Times to undercut all its rivals. Now it's selling at the same price as every other serious daily title.
But it's the underlying message that is so fascinating. The Times is once again going to appeal only to a well-heeled elite, those mythical "top people" who formed its readership before Murdoch acquired the paper in 1981. If it is to attract new readers, it must do so from its competitors. Poaching them from the red-tops in order to provide a better headline circulation figure is no longer considered worthwhile.
Meanwhile, The Sun does not need to be so fussy. It can trawl for readers wherever it likes. Quantity rather than quality counts for Britain's best-selling daily as it strives to avoid its sale falling below three million, partly a psychological barrier and partly a commercial necessity in order to maintain its advertising rates.
The difference in pricing strategy between The Times and The Sun also underlines the growing class division within British society, one based more on intellect rather than on occupational status, on a desire to be informed rather than a desire to be entertained.
The spread of affluence has not proved to be a leveller after all. In fact, the gap is widening. The elite has grown but slightly, as the marginally improved sales figures for serious newspapers imply, while the "masses", if they even bother to read a paper, choose redtops with an editorial agenda that eschews the important news they covered in the past.
They are also, as The Sun illustrated over the Rhys Jones murder, devoid of coherent and consistent analysis, appealing to emotion rather than rationality. Following the boy's death the paper published a full-page leading article that asked interesting and relevant questions about the state of our society, railing against "a failing education system", the marketing of alcohol to the young, the lack of parental responsibility.
All fine of course. But these were hollow sentiments given that this is a newspaper that has fostered, day by day, drip by drip, much of the irresponsibility it condemns. It mocks authority. It titillates. Its relentless concentration on the misbehaviour of celebrities has the effect of glamourising them, turning them into inappropriate role models for the young.
The Sun's attitude is that it isn't their fault if readers get the wrong message from content that undermines the values the paper tells them to adopt: it isn't there to educate them.
What this pandering to the lowest common denominator ensures is that there is a growing class division between the informed and the ill-informed. That will be to the overall detriment of the kind of society whose passing The Sun bemoans.
