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.)

Friday, October 09, 2015

On Wills and other documentations : How women lost out in the past... and still do... in marriage certificates

From openDemocracy:

Documenting women’s lives: mothers' names on marriage certificates

LAUREN JOHNSON 5 October 2015

In England and Wales in the twenty-first century we continue to perpetuate a system that writes women out of our collective history, and we are all poorer for it.

Her name was Thomasine Bonaventure. She grew up in Cornwall, then – like so many, before and since – she went to seek her fortune in London. She married three times, each time to a tailor of the city. Every time one of her husbands died she took over his business for a time, and on her third husband’s death she devoted the rest of her life to training up apprentices, educating a handful of disadvantaged children in her home and founding a school back in Cornwall. She was not only tremendously capable, but also a little showy in her good fortune, travelling the streets of London swathed in rich gowns and riding a horse decked out in blue velvet.

We know this much about Thomasine because before she died in 1512 she wrote a will in which her charitable work, her business and educational endeavours, and her husband's are all mentioned. Other documents help to fill the gaps that remain: the wills of those husbands, the royal licence for her education foundation, the records kept by the crafts of which her husbands, their apprentices and even Thomasine herself were members. In short, like all historical figures, our knowledge of Thomasine is a product of the paper trail she left behind.

But this paper trail would have been considerably fainter had Thomasine died a wife rather than a widow. Since a wife was the property of her husband, she was not permitted to write a will without her husband’s permission. As a result, far more men’s wills survive than women’s. It is very likely that Thomasine’s last husband Sir John Percyvale owed his swift rise to preeminence in the Merchant Taylors Guild and the City of London to his marriage, riding his wife’s coat-tails into the tailoring community. Yet if they worked together during John’s life – if they made decisions about their trade as a couple, if they co-tutored their apprentices, if they bought homes and furnishings and hired servants in consultation with one another, or even if Thomasine expressly dominated their decision-making process – we do not know it. Documents have serious limitations, particularly when it comes to charting the lives of women in the past.

More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lauren-johnson/documenting-womens-lives-%E2%80%A8mothers-names-on-marriage-certificates
Link

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