Originally Posted by
Brian Abraham
Tony Benn announced that he would change the spelling back to Concorde. This created a nationalist uproar that died down when Benn stated that the suffixed ‹e› represented "Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale)." In his memoirs, he recounts a tale of a letter from an irate Scotsman claiming: "[Y]ou talk about 'E' for England, but part of it is made in Scotland." Given Scotland’s contribution of providing the nose cone for the aircraft, Benn replied, "[I]t was also 'E' for 'Écosse' (the French name for Scotland) — and I might have added 'e' for extravagance and 'e' for escalation as well!"
Whatever one may think of the guy's political views, there's no arguing that he was and remains as sharp as a tack - something very much missing in today's
PR-obsessed political class.