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The new system adds four extra hats: Elite; Established Middle Class; Technical Middle Class; New Affluent Workers; Emergent Service Workers; Traditional Working Class; and Precariat.

You can do an online survey to determine which category you slip into when really only two matter: Them and Us. I am a New Affluent Worker, which means I'm working class but doing alright for myself. My deskmate, who is far more refined than I, came out as an Emergent Service Worker, which makes one think of a caterpillar pupating.

The Herald's Society Editor is Elite and affronted. It is only the very posh who are saddened to learn they're posher than they'd thought. He's currently trying to hide his bowler under his chair.

It's funny; we all reject the notion of class but all jumped at the chance to take the survey and find out our place in the scheme of things.

The questionnaire asks details about income but takes in household earnings, not individual income, meaning the single among us will likely fall into lower class brackets, as I do.

Instead of focusing on job and income the new scale, using ideas from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, utilises cultural and social capital.

It also asks about whom you socialise with – shop workers or farmers; university lecturers or managing directors. Music tastes feature – classical or hip hop. Hip hop seems to be a divisive factor. There is no category considering a nostalgic fondness for Coolio's C U When U Get There, which samples Pachelbel's Canon in D Major.

The only resemblance between the old classification and the proposed new is that there is an elite and a precariat - a firm top and bottom and a fluid middle.

Knowing your class is predominantly a nonsense but I suppose the only heartening aspect of our new seven-tier caste system is seeing the possibilities of moving around it. Well, heartening if you're moving up. Not so on the slippery slide down.