How should we judge a government?

In Malaysia, if you don't watch television or read newspapers, you are uninformed; but if you do, you are misinformed!

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience - Mark Twain

Why we should be against censorship in a court of law: Publicity is the very soul of justice … it keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial. - Jeremy Bentham

"Our government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no
responsibility at the other. " - Ronald Reagan

Government fed by the people

Government fed by the people

Career options

Career options
I suggest government... because nobody has ever been caught.

Corruption so prevalent it affects English language?

Corruption so prevalent it affects English language?
Corruption is so prevalent it affects English language?

When there's too much dirt...

When there's too much dirt...
We need better tools... to cover up mega corruptions.

Prevent bullying now!

Prevent bullying now!
If you're not going to speak up, how is the world supposed to know you exist? “Orang boleh pandai setinggi langit, tapi selama ia tidak menulis, ia akan hilang di dalam masyarakat dan dari sejarah.” - Ananta Prameodya Toer (Your intellect may soar to the sky but if you do not write, you will be lost from society and to history.)

Monday, February 27, 2012

Woman who signed away inheritance

The Irish lawyer Maurice Healy recounts in his book, The Old Munster Circuit, the story of a well-to-do Irishman who made his money in America, and returned to Ireland to die.

He had quarreled with his family, and lived with a small farmer and his wife, who looked after him well. As often happens in such circumstances, the farmer's wife's one worry was to make sure of getting the old man's money.

The priest told him that it was his duty to make a will. "Leave the room!" the priest ordered the farmer's wife. Reluctantly she went and alone the priest helped the dying man to make his will. A serving girl was called in to be the second witness. As soon as the priest had departed, the wife could contain herself no longer: she crept into the room and, with the body lying stiff on the bed, searched everywhere for the will.

At last, she found it: all was well, everything was left to her and her husband. "There it stood," relates Healey, "witnessed by the priest and the girl." But she still felt unsafe. Somehow the piece of paper seemed so naked, with just those two signatures upon it, and that of the man now lying dead before her.

She took pen and ink, and wrote in her own name as that of a third witness - thereby signing away her own inheritance and that of her husband, and ensuring that everything went to the distant relatives in the United States whom her lodger, with almost his last breath, had tried to exclude.

Alas, she did not know that neither a witness nor the husband or wife of a witness can usually receive anything under a will that they sign as a witness.

(From an article, Willpower over the living, which appeared in The Malay Mail on August 5, 1983)
Link

No comments: