spell checking broken in all gnome apps

[rob <mailingLists@pangolin.org.uk>]

Hi,

I'm running sid and did an upgrade last week (it had probably been about
a month since my last upgrade), since then spellchecking hasn't worked
in any gnome app (my most recent upgrade was about an hour ago).

In abiword the spellcheck button is grayed out, and evolution just tells
me that no misspelled words were found.

I've checked that aspell is installed and the word list for my locale
(en_GB). I've tried changeing the local to the utf-8 version and C, but
it makes no difference.

There are no errors anywhere obvious or when the apps are started from
the console.

Any one have any idea what the problem might be and what to try next?

thanks
-- 

rob