Dear Sir or Madam,
I am a British citizen of Sicilian ancestry.
I have read with great personal happiness the recent news that school districts in England and Wales have started to include the Sicilian language and ethnicity in their enrolment forms.
The happiness was short lived, as after a day or two I read an article stating that "the Foreign Office in London has apologised" and that the forms "will be fixed":
http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2016/10/12/uk-apologises-for-school-forms-2_e3d72ec3-7346-4e8c-ac3b-cca7d9ad2fe9.html
Absolutely flabbergasted that the FCO would issues such an excuse, supinely accepting an imposition of a friendly but foreign country which will be felt as discriminatory by every speaker of the Sicilian language living in the UK, I have looked on the FCO website for the news item reporting such an action, but I could find none.
Could you please confirm that there was no excuse, and that the FCO will not impose the schools to "fix" the forms?
If indeed the FCO issued such an excuse, could you please refer me to the instructions on how to protest with the FCO for such a decision? Should I raise a FOI to understand how that was taken, and why the view of the Sicilian speakers living in the UK was not sought beforehand?
Kind regards,
Alessandro Riolo
