Public relations officers need to be able to read properly
Lara Boffa’s inability to understand syntax that is a little more complicated than that of your average Ladybird book has led her to believe I have Sir Paul Boffa down as her great-grandfather, not her grandfather. Now she is busy on Facebook insulting me about that too.
Her embarrassing mistake comes from her failure to decipher this impossibly difficult paragraph I wrote this morning:
The fact of the matter is that because of the unnatural generation gap between the unscrupulous Lara Boffa and her father (which was of more than two generations rather than just the one), there is no way she could ever have known – and hence loved – her grandparents. Paul Boffa died in 1962, many years before Lara was born. When his widow campaigned against Mintoff and for Fenech Adami in 1981, Lara was in nappies or barely out of them.
What that means, Miss Boffa, is that because your father was actually much more than old enough to be your grandfather, you should have, through the normal progression of generations, been Paul Boffa’s GREAT-granddaughter and not his granddaughter. Most of grow up knowing our grandparents, but almost none of us knew our great-grandparents and so have absolutely no sense of them as human beings – nor, because we never knew them, could we possibly have loved them.
What I am saying here, to spell it out even further, is that your grandfather Paul Boffa figures in your life the way a great-grandfather would figure in other people’s: as a remote and distant figure from another era, who died before you born, and who you know only by name, through photographs and family anecdotes. You never knew him as a grandfather – a constant presence in your childhood, teens, 20s and even 30s – because it was not biologically possible. He was born in 1890.
The photograph you have put on public view on Facebook, of you with your father, speaks for itself. With almost everyone else, that would have been their grandfather.
I trust you understand that this is not criticism of your parents’ choices. It is something else: an explanation of why you are thoroughly disingenuous when you speak about your grandfather in such a way as to give others (with a confused knowledge of history) to believe that you knew and loved him and that he was a grandfather in the way others understand it, rather than just a biological and legal fact. My point is that it is precisely because you never knew and loved your grandfather that you have no psychological or moral barrier at all to aiding and abetting the current crop of Mintoffians and joining a party that celebrates the very man who made a mission of destroying him.
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Daphne, you should be much kinder with people who have an IQ of a 6 year old. The above is too complicated for Lara.
Public relations officers need to be beautiful and Lara Boffa is STUNNING! Choke on your vomit Daphne!
[Daphne – How wrong you are. Public relations officers need to be wised up, sharp, on the ball, articulate, with good language skills, know people, have manners and understand how things are done. Their looks, either one way or the other, are utterly irrelevant, though they must always be well-groomed and have a quietly confident personality. You’re thinking of Berlusconi’s approach to doing business, which is anathema even in his own country. Unfortunately, as a committed Mintoffian (you are a regular here) you subscribe to the Labour Party’s deliberate banalisation of public life in Malta. You also have your political party’s flair for words. I am very glad not to be Lara Boffa. Any woman stupid enough to trade in nothing but her looks – even if one is born with not much intelligence, there are other ways – will wake up before long to discover that nobody buys wrinkles and a turkey neck.]
Woah, check out Flattering Romeo. Welcome to the new era, where idiots rule.
U mela, l-aqwa li tkun ‘bjuwtifull’ u jkollha xi naqra ‘gisem’ ukoll – l-intelligenza x’nambuha taht it-tmexxija ta’ l-aktar gvern femminista li qatt kellha Malta?
@Stingray
“Public relations officers need to be beautiful”.
If this is so true then why on earth was Joseph Muscat the chosen PR officer (for a very short stint) during Mario Vella’s reign at the Malta Development Corporation from 1996 to 1998?
Back then he looked like a fat ginger poodle with acne, but that wasn’t the real reason he was unfit for the job. Labour will never change…..you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
Joseph Muscat’s PRO is Kurt Farrugia. Beautiful, he ain’t.
You’re thinking of cigarette girls, Stingray, though even they are a little bit passé.
Sure, being attractive can help in certain ways, but not in ways that are becoming to a national council for science and technology.
An astute understanding of the field, an ability to address awkward questions promptly and efficiently rather than evasively, and an openness to criticism do far more for the image of an organization than the physical appearance of its PRO.
A good PRO is invisible, literally because communication is not always face to face, and, more importantly, because if a PRO’s job is well done, it is the organization, and not the person, that is noticeable.
A basic lesson in external relations, a significant part of Lara Boffa’s job, is that a helpful attitude is half the answer to any question. On the matter of questions about her qualifications and method of appointment Lara Boffa has failed miserably.
Being attractive can, in fact, be a handicap as you constantly need to prove that you are not just a pretty face. So far, Lara Boffa has proved the opposite.
She’s not even that attractive.
In that case, I am quite sure that the financial package she negotiated with the chairman/dentist/botoxer includes free Botox injections as an additional perk to the car and the mobile.
I have an extremely beautiful swine at home, so according to Stingray, it would make an excellent public relations officer.
Daphne, you have a way of uncovering the past. This makes those vulnerable very angry with you as they want to hide their past. Lara Boffa has been unmasked as the daughter of a Mintoffian hairdresser from Zejtun, who always espoused her mother’s politics rather than ‘switching’ from those of her father’s family.
@Stringray: how pathetic – so in your opinion a public relations officer has to be ”STUNNING”, as you put it, to be qualified! Oh get a life.
To me this is fascinating, having known Dr. Boffa closely through my father, who was his political follower to his grave, at Tarxien on our street. What a juxtaposition of facts.
I can hardly believe the turn of events in this transformed family history. I still hold Dr. Boffa as he came across to me, a sincere promoter of the true working class of his days, in spite of great difficulties.
He was to me the symbol of a grandfather who I did not have on this earth. I followed his advice to take sociology which was unusual in those days and which I did. He had a great admirer and friend called Eric Lee, who was a Nato officer and who made a point of visiting him whenever he was in Malta.
Stingray, you cannot possibly be that stupid.You are out to wind people up, yes?