UK lawmaker grouses about Bengali sign at London station, Elon Musk reacts

Amid an ongoing debate over the English-Bengali signage at London’s Whitechapel station, Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a British MP’s complaint that station names in the city “should be in English, and English only”.

The tech billionaire replied with a simple “Yes”, to Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe’s tweet on Sunday, which read, “This is London – the station name should be in English, and English only.”

Lowe also posted a picture of the station, with the signage both in English and Bengali.

In 2022, Transport for London (TfL) authorised the bilingual signage at London’s Whitechapel Station to honour contributions made by the Bangladeshi community. Whitechapel is home to the biggest Bangladeshi community in the UK.

At the time, John Biggs, mayor of Tower Hamlets — the London borough where Whitechapel is located, said that he was “delighted” at the installation of the bilingual signage “to recognise the contribution our Bangladeshi community has made to Tower Hamlets and London as a whole”.

Besides Whitechapel, the Southall station also has an English-Punjabi signage. Southall is home to the largest Punjabi community outside the Indian subcontinent.

Earlier on Sunday, Rupert Lowe posted another tweet about “how uncontrolled mass immigration has put women and girls in Britain at risk”.

“We’re welcoming countless men from cultures that hold no respect for women – is it a surprise that many of them arrive in our country, and hold no respect for women? No. It is not. This is impacting more women than we realise,” the post, which was retweeted by Musk, read.

The latest developments come as the UK witnessed a 20 per cent dip in long-term net immigration.

According to provisional estimates by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of immigrants fell from 906,000 in the year ending June 2023 to 728,000 in June 2024.

Indians emerged as the leading group of non-EU migrants, topping both work and study visa categories, with 240,000 recorded for long-term immigration to the UK as of June 2024.