Most big cities show symptoms of snobbery, but Sydney is blatant in its display, which extends way past Paddington, as odious as the Village Inn's form of occupation segregation might be. Owner Leeroy​ Peterson told the local paper Central Sydney: "There are no tradies any more, we have a no hi-vis policy, it doesn't fit the demographic of the area any more."

Peterson is hardly alone in preferring a discriminatory dress code to admit only whatever is then thought to be the right crowd. But that didn't stop a brief and hypocritical pile-on from those prepared to howl outrage at that instance of wankery, while ignoring many others.

That one bar prefers the custom of lawyers to that of builders, even if the modern builder might be richer than a big-firm solicitor, is no more than extra evidence, if any were needed, that a disturbing proportion of Sydneysiders are desperate to appear better than others.

Sydney's snobbery is found in real estate, where supposedly intelligent people suggest renaming places to sound better, like the daft idea a few years ago to hack off part of Redfern and call it "South Dowling". It's in sport, where which code of football you follow is a proxy for social class, and it's at the airport, where the national carrier offers different tiers of business lounges on top of the Qantas club to avoid its own hi-vis problem. Too many FIFOs, not enough suits.

It's seen in the scrap over council mergers. That a city this size has 44 councils is madness. There are sensible arguments about where boundaries should fall, and isolated cases of genuine exceptionalism – like the central City of Sydney, which surely has been gerrymandered enough already.