Newsnight

15/03/2011 (2011x51)

:

Tonight we're devoting much of the programme to examining the middle class under pressure. For the first time in years this group - who had assumed that if the economy grew their income would grow - are finding this is no longer true. Wages are frozen, and the cost of living is soaring. Tonight our Economics editor Paul Mason reports from Sandwich in Kent where he meets people seeing the value of their wages, homes and pensions eroding and their prospects disappearing. Stephen Smith considers why so many people describe themselves as middle class nowadays. And we'll be joined live by MPs David Willetts and John Denham, and by people from different parts of the income scale - including a single parent who is being made redundant and a couple with two kids who rent their home and live off overdrafts. Plus Susan Watts, our Science editor, will update us on the situation at the Japanese quake-stricken nuclear plant where radiation levels are now at a level harmful to human health.