Hail Mary, The Bonk Of England

The Mail Online Right Minds section, a repository of frothing and ranting punditry without equal on the web, has changed its right hand top link twice now since launch day: first was Peter Hitchens, then Melissa Kite (another refugee from the Maily Telegraph). Now the spot is taken by Mary Ellen Synon. It’s not a name heard in the same breath as Mad Mel and Fat Dick, and that’s a pity.

Because Ms Synon can froth and rant with the best of them, especially when the subject is the EU. She hates the EU, which is a strange paradox, given the benefits that ranting about it have conferred upon her. But what she doesn’t hate is telling everyone how bad the EU is, and that those who work in its service are supposedly labouring under the belief that their presence in Brussels is pre-ordained.

So no-one should be surprised at her latest outburst, posted yesterday evening, in which she attacks “eurocrats”, the latest pejorative term for anyone who works for the EU. In fact, the piece uses the word seventeen times. Along the way there are comparisons to Arthur Scargill, the Borgias, and the assertion that UK taxpayers are the second highest contributors to EU employees’ pay.

This last is a commonly used attempt to whip up anti-EU feeling: when you consider the per capita contribution to the EU, the UK comes out seventh. But this, like adding bank holidays to make EU workers’ allowances look more generous than they actually are, typifies the hardened Europhobic, although the piece’s unpleasantness may deter some from examining Ms Synon’s credentials further.

And that would be a pity: this devotee of Ayn Rand and champion of half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has enjoyed an occasionally colourful and controversial past. In London in the early 1990s she embarked on an affair with Rupert Pennant-Rea, deputy governor of the Bank of England. They were rumoured to have had sex on the carpet in the governor’s dressing room.

Sadly, Pennant-Rea decided to spend more time with his family, leaving Ms Synon to turn to full time ranting punditry. Thus engaged, she went after travellers and asylum seekers, no doubt hastening her arrival in Dacreland. Her time at the Irish Independent was brought to a close after she penned an article attacking the Sydney Paralympic Games, bringing forth universal condemnation.

But now the woman once nicknamed “The Bonk Of England” is 60, has missed the boat at Threadneedle Street, and is reduced to whingeing jealously about those in Brussels who earn more than she does. It is a sad twilight to a career that never really took off – or maybe it did, but only in brief.

[That’s enough double entendre – Ed]