English spelling reform makes some news

Over at Crooksandliars there's an open thread about an episode on Fox & Friends where they discuss (well, more like say the first thing that comes to their minds) spelling reform. Here's the video.

I'm against spelling reform of course. The only part that could be reformed are digraphs like ph; the rest would be a really bad idea, in particular because English's weird spelling allows people to write the same way regardless of their own accent, and if we were to all of a sudden start writing vowels the way they were 'actually pronounced' then the question would arise of which country's pronunciation to choose, and furthermore which part of that country gets to be annointed as the One And Only True Pronounciation, which just wouldn't work.

By the way, I'm probably the last person on the internet to find this but I saw this spell checker poem last night for the first time and it's just hilarious:

(It's a poem that a spell checker will mark as correct because none of the words are spelled incorrectly)

Spell Chequer

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

A chequer is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule.