Debden Park High School: Boy, 12, dead and several hurt in crash

A 12-year-old boy has died and several others have been hurt in a crash near a school.
The collision happened near Debden Park High School in Loughton, Essex, at about 15:30 GMT.
Essex Police said there was likely to be a "serious and prolonged investigation" and have started a murder investigation.
Essex and Herts Air Ambulance said it had treated "a number of patients" at the scene.
Police earlier said Willingale Road could not be accessed from junctions on either side of the school.
The area remains cordoned off amid a large emergency services presence.
Live: People hurt in 'serious' crash near school
Insp Rob Brettal, from Essex Police's serious collision investigation unit, said there had been "a lot of speculation from social media which could cause further worry and upset to the community and family".
He asked people to wait for the force to issue official updates.

'Wolfie wrote:

Americans misspell aluminium, colour, honour and a few other common words as well...

Original Quill wrote:

'Wolfie wrote:

Americans misspell aluminium, colour, honour and a few other common words as well...

Correction.  Americans made sense of the inane spelling habits that the British had come up with.  In the late-19th century a commission was created, later to be headed by President Theodore Roosevelt, to return common sense to spelling in English.

What's with all the extraneous 'u's?  It's just left-over Norman French, and y'all no longer even speak French.  Who needs all those 'gh's when the sound is 'oo' as in through?  And since when did a 'ph' become an 'f'?  And we've already got a proper spelling for 'cue'...don't need any 'queues'.

You guys needed a little common sense, and you got it!  Line up to the left to say 'thank you'...and Merry Christmas.  

eddie wrote:

A 12-year-old boy has died and several others have been hurt in a crash near a school.
The collision happened near Debden Park High School in Loughton, Essex, at about 15:30 GMT.
Essex Police said there was likely to be a "serious and prolonged investigation" and have started a murder investigation.
Essex and Herts Air Ambulance said it had treated "a number of patients" at the scene.
Police earlier said Willingale Road could not be accessed from junctions on either side of the school.
The area remains cordoned off amid a large emergency services presence.
Live: People hurt in 'serious' crash near school
Insp Rob Brettal, from Essex Police's serious collision investigation unit, said there had been "a lot of speculation from social media which could cause further worry and upset to the community and family".
He asked people to wait for the force to issue official updates.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-50637430


My son attended this school up until this summer.
It is awful.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Correction.  Americans made sense of the inane spelling habits that the British had come up with.  In the late-19th century a commission was created, later to be headed by President Theodore Roosevelt, to return common sense to spelling in English.

What's with all the extraneous 'u's?  It's just left-over Norman French, and y'all no longer even speak French.  Who needs all those 'gh's when the sound is 'oo' as in through?  And since when did a 'ph' become an 'f'?  And we've already got a proper spelling for 'cue'...don't need any 'queues'.

You guys needed a little common sense, and you got it!  Line up to the left to say 'thank you'...and Merry Christmas.  

Because, Quill,  that is how those words are spelled (or spelt, if you wish to be argumentative) in the Oxford English Dictionary and my own personal Bible, the Shorter Oxford, and possibly even in the Dr Samuel Johnson Dictionary which I have had the privilege of seeing in its original manuscript form in Litchfield Cathedral...though I am far from being a lexicographical expert.

They represent the compendium of the evolution of our magnificent English language.

If you linguistic Johnny-come-latelies wish to converse in your quirky and simplified version of phonetics, then pray do so.


Ps. No. I most certainly did NOT give you that "red."

History Stories wrote:Teddy Roosevelt’s Bold (but doomed) Battle to Change American Spelling:

In August 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an order from his summer residence in Oyster Bay, New York, that would soon be the talk of Washington—and the world beyond.

Addressing himself to the government printer, Roosevelt decreed that all documents issued by the White House should now follow the spellings advocated by an organization known as the Simplified Spelling Board.

Launched the previous March and financed by the steel baron Andrew Carnegie, the board wanted to strip the American language of its antiquated British baggage and create a clean and modern version for the 20th century.

Carnegie, who’d immigrated to the United States as a teenager with little formal education, had high hopes for the project. “Mr. Carnegie has long been convinced that English might be made the world language of the future, and thus one of the influences leading to universal peace,” the New York Times reported. “He believes that the chief obstacle to its speedy adoption is to be found in its contradictory and difficult spelling.”

At the time, written German, which had been simplified in 1901, seemed poised to become the “world language of the future”—a development that neither Carnegie nor Roosevelt, both intensely competitive men, could possibly have welcomed.

Carnegie recruited a long list of luminaries to the cause, including the writer Mark Twain, the philosopher William James, Melvil Dewey of Dewey Decimal System fame, and the presidents of Columbia and Stanford universities, among others. If Carnegie’s “universal peace” seemed like a grandiose goal, they could point to other, more basic benefits. Spelling would be easier to teach in schools, possibly shaving a year or more off the curriculum, educators said. Business correspondence would be faster and cheaper to handle. Publishers could save on typesetting, ink, and paper costs.

In a September 1906 speech, Twain argued that the reforms would also help new immigrants assimilate. Traditional spelling, he maintained, “keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.”

As a first step, the board published a list of suggested substitutes for 300 words whose spelling it considered archaic. For example, it proposed that “although” be shortened to “altho,” “fixed” become “fixt,” and “thorough” be traded in for “thoro.”

Roosevelt forwarded the list to the government printer, with his official blessing. The 26th president was so “thoroly” convinced of the idea’s merits that he didn’t realize the controversy he was about to spark.

A Man of Words—and Lots of Them

Roosevelt’s obsession with words wouldn’t have been a total surprise to Americans of the day. Despite his popular image as a hard-charging soldier, big-game hunter, jungle explorer, and all-around outdoorsy he-man, he was also one of the nation’s most literate presidents. He wrote more than 30 books throughout his life and was a voracious reader as well, reportedly averaging a book a day.

But the reaction to his spelling move was swift and mostly negative, even though many of the words on the list were already in wide use, such “honor” instead of “honour” and “check” in place of “cheque.” The New York Times, in fact, calculated that at least 131 of the 300 simplified spellings appeared regularly in its own pages.

That seemed to make little difference, though. “Had President Roosevelt declared war against Germany, he could not have caused much more agitation in Washington,” the Washington Times reported.

“Of all President Roosevelt’s moves to stir up the animals,” the WashingtonEvening Star wrote a week after the order, simplified spelling seemed to strike an unusually sensitive nerve. “Abroad it has particularly aroused the latent animosity of the English,” the paper noted.

Indeed, barely a day after Roosevelt’s announcement, the New York Times reported that, “President Roosevelt is the laughing stock of literary London,” adding that newspaper writers there were now simplifying his surname, referring to him as Rusvelt and Ruzvelt, while Carnegie was caricatured as Andru Karnegi and Karnege. (American papers also had their fun with the men’s names. The Baltimore Sun asked whether the president would start spelling his name Rusevelt or “get down to the fact and spell it Butt-in-sky?”)

Another report summed up the reaction across England: “Mr. Roosevelt, heretofore regarded as only a little lower than the angels, is now characterized as whimsical, silly, headstrong, and despotic.”

1906 Roosevelt Phonetic Spelling Book. (Credit: Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site)

Congress Cries Foul

Nowhere was the reaction more negative than in the U.S. Congress. where many members were irritated that Roosevelt had bypassed them.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, attempted to calm the spelling storm. In a letter to the government printer, he characterized his order as merely an experiment, saying that the American public would ultimately decide its fate. “If the slight changes in the spelling of the three hundred words proposed wholly or partially meet popular approval, then the changes will become permanent without any reference to what public officials or individual private citizens may feel; if they do not ultimately meet with popular approval they will be dropt, and that is all there is about it,” he wrote, managing to sneak in at least one word from the beleaguered list.

The controversy seemed to have subsided, when, in October 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court unexpectedly got involved. Reviewing a government brief that had been prepared in accordance with Roosevelt’s order, Chief Justice Melville Fuller expressed his displeasure at seeing the word “thru” substituted for “through.” The government’s lawyer assured the court that it would never happen again.

The next month, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, noticing that the draft of a recent bill had been printed with simplified spellings, announced that it would be calling on the public printer to explain himself. Two weeks later the full committee weighed in, adding a provision to the bill that, “Hereafter in printing documents authorized by law or ordered by Congress… the Government Printing Office shall follow the rules of orthography established by Webster’s or other generally accepted dictionaries of the English language.”

The entire House took up the matter the following week, debating the pros and (mostly) cons of simplified spelling for three hours. While Roosevelt’s reforms had a few supporters, the prevailing view was that he had overstepped his authority. “Some time before very long, the people of the United States are going to insist on having a President that will attend to his own business,” one Congressman suggested.

Two days later, on December 12, 1906, the House voted 142 to 25 to withhold funding for the printing of any government document that deviated from conventional spelling. One impassioned foe declared, “If the President can change 300 words, he can change the spelling of 300,000.”

Roosevelt Retreats

By now Roosevelt realized that he had really “stept” in it. The following day, he declared surrender, vowing to abandon the effort and admitting in a letter to a fellow advocate that it was “worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten.”

Though the New York Times praised the president for his grace in defeat, he might have had a more pragmatic reason for backing down. The next presidential election was coming up in 1908, and simplified spelling had the potential to be a contentious issue in the campaign. As the Boston Transcript put it, “Unable to excoriate Roosevelt for squelching the coal strike, beginning work on the Panama Canal, stopping the Russo-Japanese War, cleaning up the packing houses, and irritating the trusts, [Roosevelt’s opponents] will denounce him with lurid frenzy for tampering with the spelling book.”

Mark Twain also took note of the over-the-top reaction to Roosevelt’s fairly modest proposal. In dinner speech honoring Andrew Carnegie a year later, he joked that, “Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have had if spelling had been left all alone.”

From its hopeful start to ignominious finish, Roosevelt’s initiative lasted barely four months. While it may have been a failure at the time, quite a few of its recommendations have long since come to pass. Although we haven’t adopted “kist” instead of “kissed” or “rime” in favor of “rhyme,” numerous words on the list are now in common use: “clue” (not “clew”), “draft” (not “daught”), “jail” (not “gaol”), “labor” (not “labour”), and many others.

Americans today might rightly wonder what all the clamor (not “clamour”) was about.

https://www.history.com/news/theodore-roosevelt-spelling-controversy

Original Quill wrote:

'Wolfie wrote:

Americans misspell aluminium, colour, honour and a few other common words as well...

Correction.  Americans made sense of the inane spelling habits that the British had come up with.  In the late-19th century a commission was created, later to be headed by President Theodore Roosevelt, to return common sense to spelling in English.

What's with all the extraneous 'u's?  It's just left-over Norman French, and y'all no longer even speak French.  Who needs all those 'gh's when the sound is 'oo' as in through?  And since when did a 'ph' become an 'f'?  And we've already got a proper spelling for 'cue'...don't need any 'queues'.

You guys needed a little common sense, and you got it!  Line up to the left to say 'thank you'...and Merry Christmas.  

Original Quill wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Because, Quill,  that is how those words are spelled (or spelt, if you wish to be argumentative) in the Oxford English Dictionary and my own personal Bible, the Shorter Oxford, and possibly even in the Dr Samuel Johnson Dictionary which I have had the privilege of seeing in its original manuscript form in Litchfield Cathedral...though I am far from being a lexicographical expert.

They represent the compendium of the evolution of our magnificent English language.

If you linguistic Johnny-come-latelies wish to converse in your quirky and simplified version of phonetics, then pray do so.


Ps. No. I most certainly did NOT give you that "red."

I know.  It's usually didge who distributes the reds.  He gets erotic satisfaction out of it.  Makes him feel good, I guess.

I've said my piece.  Nobody contradicted me--as far as the silly 'u's, 'gh's and 'ph's you guys live by.  I've tol't you Brits that you are klinghing to your French awreghines.  American spelling is far superior because it is more relevant, efficient and logical.  It was draughted by a duly constituted group of schawolarghs:

See:

History Stories wrote:Teddy Roosevelt’s Bold (but doomed) Battle to Change American Spelling:

In August 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an order from his summer residence in Oyster Bay, New York, that would soon be the talk of Washington—and the world beyond.

Addressing himself to the government printer, Roosevelt decreed that all documents issued by the White House should now follow the spellings advocated by an organization known as the Simplified Spelling Board.

Launched the previous March and financed by the steel baron Andrew Carnegie, the board wanted to strip the American language of its antiquated British baggage and create a clean and modern version for the 20th century.

Carnegie, who’d immigrated to the United States as a teenager with little formal education, had high hopes for the project. “Mr. Carnegie has long been convinced that English might be made the world language of the future, and thus one of the influences leading to universal peace,” the New York Times reported. “He believes that the chief obstacle to its speedy adoption is to be found in its contradictory and difficult spelling.”

At the time, written German, which had been simplified in 1901, seemed poised to become the “world language of the future”—a development that neither Carnegie nor Roosevelt, both intensely competitive men, could possibly have welcomed.

Carnegie recruited a long list of luminaries to the cause, including the writer Mark Twain, the philosopher William James, Melvil Dewey of Dewey Decimal System fame, and the presidents of Columbia and Stanford universities, among others. If Carnegie’s “universal peace” seemed like a grandiose goal, they could point to other, more basic benefits. Spelling would be easier to teach in schools, possibly shaving a year or more off the curriculum, educators said. Business correspondence would be faster and cheaper to handle. Publishers could save on typesetting, ink, and paper costs.

In a September 1906 speech, Twain argued that the reforms would also help new immigrants assimilate. Traditional spelling, he maintained, “keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.”

As a first step, the board published a list of suggested substitutes for 300 words whose spelling it considered archaic. For example, it proposed that “although” be shortened to “altho,” “fixed” become “fixt,” and “thorough” be traded in for “thoro.”

Roosevelt forwarded the list to the government printer, with his official blessing. The 26th president was so “thoroly” convinced of the idea’s merits that he didn’t realize the controversy he was about to spark.

A Man of Words—and Lots of Them

Roosevelt’s obsession with words wouldn’t have been a total surprise to Americans of the day. Despite his popular image as a hard-charging soldier, big-game hunter, jungle explorer, and all-around outdoorsy he-man, he was also one of the nation’s most literate presidents. He wrote more than 30 books throughout his life and was a voracious reader as well, reportedly averaging a book a day.

But the reaction to his spelling move was swift and mostly negative, even though many of the words on the list were already in wide use, such “honor” instead of “honour” and “check” in place of “cheque.” The New York Times, in fact, calculated that at least 131 of the 300 simplified spellings appeared regularly in its own pages.

That seemed to make little difference, though. “Had President Roosevelt declared war against Germany, he could not have caused much more agitation in Washington,” the Washington Times reported.

“Of all President Roosevelt’s moves to stir up the animals,” the WashingtonEvening Star wrote a week after the order, simplified spelling seemed to strike an unusually sensitive nerve. “Abroad it has particularly aroused the latent animosity of the English,” the paper noted.

Indeed, barely a day after Roosevelt’s announcement, the New York Times reported that, “President Roosevelt is the laughing stock of literary London,” adding that newspaper writers there were now simplifying his surname, referring to him as Rusvelt and Ruzvelt, while Carnegie was caricatured as Andru Karnegi and Karnege. (American papers also had their fun with the men’s names. The Baltimore Sun asked whether the president would start spelling his name Rusevelt or “get down to the fact and spell it Butt-in-sky?”)

Another report summed up the reaction across England: “Mr. Roosevelt, heretofore regarded as only a little lower than the angels, is now characterized as whimsical, silly, headstrong, and despotic.”

1906 Roosevelt Phonetic Spelling Book. (Credit: Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site)

Congress Cries Foul

Nowhere was the reaction more negative than in the U.S. Congress. where many members were irritated that Roosevelt had bypassed them.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, attempted to calm the spelling storm. In a letter to the government printer, he characterized his order as merely an experiment, saying that the American public would ultimately decide its fate. “If the slight changes in the spelling of the three hundred words proposed wholly or partially meet popular approval, then the changes will become permanent without any reference to what public officials or individual private citizens may feel; if they do not ultimately meet with popular approval they will be dropt, and that is all there is about it,” he wrote, managing to sneak in at least one word from the beleaguered list.

The controversy seemed to have subsided, when, in October 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court unexpectedly got involved. Reviewing a government brief that had been prepared in accordance with Roosevelt’s order, Chief Justice Melville Fuller expressed his displeasure at seeing the word “thru” substituted for “through.” The government’s lawyer assured the court that it would never happen again.

The next month, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, noticing that the draft of a recent bill had been printed with simplified spellings, announced that it would be calling on the public printer to explain himself. Two weeks later the full committee weighed in, adding a provision to the bill that, “Hereafter in printing documents authorized by law or ordered by Congress… the Government Printing Office shall follow the rules of orthography established by Webster’s or other generally accepted dictionaries of the English language.”

The entire House took up the matter the following week, debating the pros and (mostly) cons of simplified spelling for three hours. While Roosevelt’s reforms had a few supporters, the prevailing view was that he had overstepped his authority. “Some time before very long, the people of the United States are going to insist on having a President that will attend to his own business,” one Congressman suggested.

Two days later, on December 12, 1906, the House voted 142 to 25 to withhold funding for the printing of any government document that deviated from conventional spelling. One impassioned foe declared, “If the President can change 300 words, he can change the spelling of 300,000.”

Roosevelt Retreats

By now Roosevelt realized that he had really “stept” in it. The following day, he declared surrender, vowing to abandon the effort and admitting in a letter to a fellow advocate that it was “worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten.”

Though the New York Times praised the president for his grace in defeat, he might have had a more pragmatic reason for backing down. The next presidential election was coming up in 1908, and simplified spelling had the potential to be a contentious issue in the campaign. As the Boston Transcript put it, “Unable to excoriate Roosevelt for squelching the coal strike, beginning work on the Panama Canal, stopping the Russo-Japanese War, cleaning up the packing houses, and irritating the trusts, [Roosevelt’s opponents] will denounce him with lurid frenzy for tampering with the spelling book.”

Mark Twain also took note of the over-the-top reaction to Roosevelt’s fairly modest proposal. In dinner speech honoring Andrew Carnegie a year later, he joked that, “Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have had if spelling had been left all alone.”

From its hopeful start to ignominious finish, Roosevelt’s initiative lasted barely four months. While it may have been a failure at the time, quite a few of its recommendations have long since come to pass. Although we haven’t adopted “kist” instead of “kissed” or “rime” in favor of “rhyme,” numerous words on the list are now in common use: “clue” (not “clew”), “draft” (not “daught”), “jail” (not “gaol”), “labor” (not “labour”), and many others.

Americans today might rightly wonder what all the clamor (not “clamour”) was about.

https://www.history.com/news/theodore-roosevelt-spelling-controversy

See also, The Roosevelt Fonetic Spelling Book (As arranged by the Simplified Spelling Board, and adopted by the U.S. government.)  (1906).

nicko wrote:Why do you drive on the right, ? this question has not been answered !

In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver’s seat; instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since he was sitting on the left, he naturally wanted everybody to pass on the left so he could look down and make sure he kept clear of the oncoming wagon’s wheels. Therefore he kept to the right side of the road.

Ben Reilly wrote:

nicko wrote:Why do you drive on the right, ? this question has not been answered !

This was done back in the days when America was quite young and a bit anxious to prove it wasn't Britain Junior but its own country.

That's also part of the reason that American English has many spellings that are different from British English.

Also found this:

In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver’s seat; instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since he was sitting on the left, he naturally wanted everybody to pass on the left so he could look down and make sure he kept clear of the oncoming wagon’s wheels. Therefore he kept to the right side of the road.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Anyone know anything about the arrested suspect and/or motive...???

nicko wrote:Why do you drive on the right, ? this question has not been answered !

eddie wrote:Okay sorry but this thread is about a Fucking lunatic driving into a bunch of school kids.

Makes another Fucking thread about driving.

A twelve year old boy lost his life. It affected me. My son went to this school.

eddie wrote:Okay sorry but this thread is about a Fucking lunatic driving into a bunch of school kids.

Makes another Fucking thread about driving.

A twelve year old boy lost his life. It affected me. My son went to this school.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:Okay sorry but this thread is about a Fucking lunatic driving into a bunch of school kids.

Makes another Fucking thread about driving.

A twelve year old boy lost his life. It affected me. My son went to this school.

Been there, done that.  Move on.  You can tell people are bored.  

gelico wrote:

eddie wrote:Okay sorry but this thread is about a Fucking lunatic driving into a bunch of school kids.

Makes another Fucking thread about driving.

A twelve year old boy lost his life. It affected me. My son went to this school.

i posted to you before edds, but it probably got lost in all the pontificating over spelling



how is your son?  have you spoken to him about this?

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Been there, done that.  Move on.  You can tell people are bored.  

I"m sorry, what do you mean by that? What are people bored of?

Original Quill wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Been there, done that.  Move on.  You can tell people are bored.  

I"m sorry, what do you mean by that? What are people bored of?

What did you mean by shifting the subject to "curbs"?  It's just a theory, but I think when a subject doesn't captivate the interest...je ne sais quoi, when there is no mystery...it's just boredom that causes people to drift off.  Then, if and when a subject comes up that's interesting, it takes over the thread.  Attention deficit.

I think that is what has happened here.

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What did you mean by shifting the subject to "curbs"?  It's just a theory, but I think when a subject doesn't captivate the interest...je ne sais quoi, when there is no mystery...it's just boredom that causes people to drift off.  Then, if and when a subject comes up that's interesting, it takes over the thread.  Attention deficit.

I think that is what has happened here.

I only briefly chastised my wife for her horrible misspelling before IMMEDIATELY bringing my post back to the topic, though.

Y'all are the ones who started talking about spelling and driving on the right.

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What did you mean by shifting the subject to "curbs"?  It's just a theory, but I think when a subject doesn't captivate the interest...je ne sais quoi, when there is no mystery...it's just boredom that causes people to drift off.  Then, if and when a subject comes up that's interesting, it takes over the thread.  Attention deficit.

I think that is what has happened here.

I only briefly chastised my wife
.

gelico wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What did you mean by shifting the subject to "curbs"?  It's just a theory, but I think when a subject doesn't captivate the interest...je ne sais quoi, when there is no mystery...it's just boredom that causes people to drift off.  Then, if and when a subject comes up that's interesting, it takes over the thread.  Attention deficit.

I think that is what has happened here.

I only briefly chastised my wife
.

BWAH HAHAHAHAHA

I can just imagine how subdued and meekly grateful she is to you

eddie wrote:

gelico wrote:



BWAH HAHAHAHAHA

I can just imagine how subdued and meekly grateful she is to you

Why, I’ll have you know, I can do “subdued and meekly grateful”....sometimes.