The way that this word is often used has been winding me up for a long time. It's when someone wants to moan about a group of people whose views differ from their own and appends the term to a description of them. How many more times do we have to read about the "PC brigade" or the "animal rights brigade" or the whichever 'brigade' has stirred the writer from their Daily Mail? Is there a lazier and more stupid cliché? The only one that comes close, in my opinion, is to refer to someone or something as 'so-called' as in 'so-called traffic expert' or 'so-called road improvements'.

FFS, it's ridiculous! Stop it.