Stop it, Lara Billboard. Your behaviour is cheap and utterly disgusting.
Lara Billboard is unable to counter with proper arguments, because there are none, the justified criticism of all those, including me, who have accused her of unprincipled opportunism and lack of integrity in trading the name of the grandfather she never knew, and her face on a billboard, for a place on the Enemalta board of directors and a salary from the Malta Council for Science and Technology.
She is unable to counter, either, the parallel accusation that she is shameless and cheap by fawning over, aiding and abetting a party leader who has made a fetish of publicly worshipping and celebrating the memory of Mintoff, the man who literally made it his mission to destroy her grandfather politically and break his spirit in life, to the shocking extent of spreading the malicious rumour, in very backward 1950s Malta, that he had an illicit relationship with his own daughter, Lara Billboard’s aunt.
(Advice to Lara Billboard and other cheap people: when somebody wants your scalp as a trophy, never oblige them. There is always going to be more in it for them than there can ever be for you. If they get your scalp, it follows that you lose it.)
So she has resorted to the cheapest tactic of all: uploading on Facebook, with no privacy settings (because that would defeat her purpose) a photograph of her father in a vulnerable and exposed state, well into his 80s, visited at home by a repulsively smug and self-satisfied Joseph Muscat, who as usual is more concerned with looking at the camera than with looking at the individual he is using for his personal ends.
Worse still is Lara Billboard’s descriptive note on the photograph: My father x. (2010, The Final Switch).
Honestly. I mean, HONESTLY. I have always thought this kind of thing to be a form of what Americans call ‘elder abuse’. People in that condition are in no position to decide for themselves who they wish to see or not see, whether they want to be photographed or not, whether they wish to be exposed in public for political publicity purposes.
The final switch? Her father looks as though he doesn’t even know who Muscat is or what he is there for. He died well before the general election. He belonged to a generation, and more particularly a social background, trained rigorously to behave graciously, with charm and civility and polite conversation, to all visitors to their home, whoever they were and even if they had never set eyes on them before.
To use your own father like this, when he is in such a vulnerable state, to photograph the situation and to then use the photograph to further your own cheap ends and those of your political patrons – well, Miss Boffa, you’re in the right political party, indeed.
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Jason Gatt can’t even spell your initials, Daphne. What poison is he talking about exactly? Facts are becoming poison now, it seems. No one appreciates that you speak the truth under your very own name and are not afraid of the repercussions. Cyber-bullying my foot. It’s personal offence we are seeing here. Hope that the truth will prevail.
Being in a position to see Malta’s ‘elder abuse’ at work somewhat often, I have to say this is one of the new lows I’ve seen people stoop to.
Ms Boffa should be ashamed of herself.
Do I see signs of her insecurity in associating herself with the Labour Party? The more she tells us she is ‘proud of it’, the more we think that she protests too much.
Using him the way many Maltese people use their aging parents when it comes to inheritance.
As a long time foreign resident, I have witnessed this many times. An unfortunate trait, especially when multiple heirs begin to infight, usually over property.
Just when you thought Jeffrey couldn’t make more of an arse of himself, they let this one loose. I’m excitedly looking forward to his next gaffe now; specifically to the MCST’s defence of whatever it may be. Jeffrey and Lara: what a terrific combination for the reputation and image of the Malta Council for Science and Technology.
“Shame on you, Lara Boffa” is not a strong and effective enough phrase. And it seems that she has no limits or shame herself.
From a comment on one of your earlier posts I realised that I knew Lara’s father many, many years ago.
From the photograph his daughter has shamelessly uploaded on Facebook I can also tell that the gentleman doesn’t have a clue what is going on and has obviously been taken by surprise.
To use your own father in this manner, without thinking twice about splashing his image in that deteriorated state all over the internet, for your own sordid purposes and worse, those of his own father’s enemies, is beyond disgusting.
This was probably planned well ahead by Joseph Muscat, Lara and her mother Pauline Caruana, to be used at the appropriate time.
Looking at that picture, I am now more convinced that the poor soul was literally at the mercy of his controlling wife and daughter, who seem to have had few feelings for him, judging by their keenness to expose him on public view at his most vulnerable, and suspiciously only in pictures uploaded while they were campaigning for Labour.
Perhaps we should be glad that Lara Boffa uploaded this particular picture. It depicts exactly who and what she is.
http://maltaundermintoff.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/boffa-mintoff-boffa/
Jekk int mara, Ms. Boffa, ippostja din il-link fuq il-Facebook page tieghek f’gieh il-memorja ta’ l-ghaziz nannuk li tant habbewh nies, imma int le ghax lanqas biss qatt kont tafu.
I am not surprised at Muscat. He did exactly the same thing to Mintoff.
http://www.maltastar.com/dart/20120820-with-mintoff-death-malta-has-been-orphaned
If she has no respect for her father, I am not surprised that she has no respect at all for her grandfather’s memory.
Shame, Lara, indeed shame.
I knew your father well and worked with him on the foundation of the National War Museum at Fort St Elmo back in the ’70s. A real gentleman who was proud of his ironclad principles.
This seems to be one trait you have not inherited.
Alas, poor Profs! I knew him – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times. What a shameful way for a daughter to treat a father who doted upon her.
This kind of abuse is precisely why we need a Commissioner for the Elderly, with fully functioning policies and laws protecting the vulnerable elderly of this country.
My father was not a public figure and neither were his parents and yet I would never, ever publish a photo of him looking so poorly on my Facebook wall.
No one wants the world to see them old and vulnerable and probably on their death bed. What immaturity, idiocy and lack of respect.
On top of the picture (which I could not believe actually came from Lara Billboard’s Facebook wall, until I actually saw it there), she also has the audicity to state that this was her father’s “final switch”. “Final” as in, “he died so did not have the time to switch back?”.
I mean, how low can people go?
All in a day’s work for Joseph Muscat. Another photo op, another vote, another day.
I simply adore the nick Lara Billboard…. too funny! Jixraqliha sew.