Comment 3 for bug 880003

[fixed]
After reading question #174349 synaptic package I was able to fix the above.
In /root/.synaptic/synaptic.conf I found a reference to natty. Changed it to oneiric.
Still threw an error but slightly different.
I did
sudo apt-get remove synaptic
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get install synaptic

That fixed the problem entirely.