The Times exposes a hidden crime wave:
They look down on council-estate dwellers as welfare-fiddling, light-fingered hoodies and chavs but it is the middle classes who are exposed today as Britain’s real habitual criminals.
More than a third of people admitted that they had paid in cash to a cleaner, plumber or other tradesman to avoid paying tax.
One in five has taken something from work and just under a third, if handed too much change in a shop or business transaction, would just keep it.
One in ten avoids paying their television licence. About 6 per cent have padded out an insurance claim.
Corruption is alive and well as 6 per cent say that they have asked a friend working in a bureaucracy to bend the rules for them.
Stephen Farrall, co-author of the report, told The Times: “There’s a lot more of it going on than people thought. The people doing this are the people who otherwise would think of themselves as the law-abiding middle classes.”
