Emacs - Kieran Healy's Emacs Starter Kit aspel

I am having some (more) difficulties getting my emacs config to work. I want to use Flyspell automatic spell checking. When I try to enable automatic spell checking (via the menu bar), I get the following error.

Starting new Ispell process aspell with english dictionary...
Error enabling Flyspell mode:
(Error: The file "/usr/local/lib/aspell-0.60/english" can not be opened 
for reading.)

A quick look at /usr/local/lib/aspell-0.60/ reveals that I have no English dictionary installed. More fully, here is what is installed:

 Lindsays-MacBook-Pro:lib ljs$ ls aspell-0.60/
 ccpp.amf       cp1258.cset     iso-8859-2.cmap     nroff-filter.info
comment.amf     dvorak.kbd      iso-8859-2.cset     nroff-filter.la
context-filter.info email-filter.info   iso-8859-3.cmap     nroff- 
filter.so
context-filter.la   email-filter.la     iso-8859-3.cset     nroff.amf
context-filter.so   email-filter.so     iso-8859-4.cmap     perl.amf
cp1250.cmap     email.amf       iso-8859-4.cset     sgml-filter.info
cp1250.cset     html-filter.info    iso-8859-5.cmap     sgml-filter.la
cp1251.cmap     html.amf        iso-8859-5.cset     sgml-filter.so
cp1251.cset     iso-8859-1.cmap     iso-8859-6.cmap     sgml.amf
cp1252.cmap     iso-8859-1.cset     iso-8859-6.cset     spell
cp1252.cset     iso-8859-10.cmap    iso-8859-7.cmap     split.kbd
cp1253.cmap     iso-8859-10.cset    iso-8859-7.cset     standard.kbd 
cp1253.cset     iso-8859-11.cmap    iso-8859-8.cmap     tex-filter.info
cp1254.cmap     iso-8859-11.cset    iso-8859-8.cset     tex-filter.la
cp1254.cset     iso-8859-13.cmap    iso-8859-9.cmap     tex-filter.so
cp1255.cmap     iso-8859-13.cset    iso-8859-9.cset     tex.amf
cp1255.cset     iso-8859-14.cmap    ispell          texinfo-filter.info
cp1256.cmap     iso-8859-14.cset    koi8-r.cmap     texinfo-filter.la
cp1256.cset     iso-8859-15.cmap    koi8-r.cset     texinfo-filter.so
cp1257.cmap     iso-8859-15.cset    koi8-u.cmap     texinfo.amf
cp1257.cset     iso-8859-16.cmap    koi8-u.cset     url.amf
cp1258.cmap     iso-8859-16.cset    none.amf

Any help greatly appreciated

Looks like you have a broken install of aspell. Assuming you used Homebrew to install it, just uninstall it, and reinstall it.

$ brew uninstall aspell
$ brew update
$ brew install aspell

If you're still having trouble, maybe comment out

(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-aspell.org")

from starter-kit.org so it looks like

;;(starter-kit-load "starter-kit-aspell.org")

This will prevent the starter-kit from loading its flycheck/aspell settings allowing you to use the defaults. You will have to manually enable flyspell on a buffer where you want to use it. Meta-x flyspell-mode will do the trick.