The Financial Times (subscription) reports that "the £1bn Northern Line extension had been due to open in 2020 but is now expected to open in 2021, pushing up costs for the project".
Guardian columnist Gary Younge writes in the defence of Stevenage in Hertfordshire after comments, quickly corrected, by the Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton that he had grown up in "slums" in the town. Young writes that "there’s a lot we can learn from my home town. Because there are no slums in Stevenage. Indeed, that was the point. It was created in 1946 by a government that did not see its purpose as merely survival but as a transformative agent to radically improve ordinary people’s lives. Responding to a housing crisis brought about by the war in particular and inequality in general, it built a town almost entirely of council houses. It was ambitious."
The Times (subscription) reports that "house prices will rise by between two per cent and four per cent next year, according to predictions by one of the UK’s biggest mortgage lenders". Halifax has "said that the shortage of homes for sale and ‘low levels of housebuilding’ would continue to support prices", according to the newspaper. "The prediction assumes a smooth departure from the European Union next March."
The Guardian reports that "almost a third of the UK’s electricity came from renewable sources between July and September, as wind turbines and solar panels helped achieve a quarterly record for green energy". The paper says that "major new offshore windfarms connecting to the grid pushed renewables to 33.1% of electricity generation across the quarter, up from 30% the year before".
