It is an April Fool you see. Ho ho. Mind you, I’m not sure how many people are getting in on the action this, since most normal people don’t get up until after midday on a Sunday. (Not me unfortunately; I’m not normal enough.)

Anyway, this post is to say that, far from passing the roundup baton to someone else, I have moved it away from WordPress.com and to its very own website — Scottish Roundup.co.uk. How swish!

When I was writing this week’s roundup I started going into a bit of a rant about the fact that MPs have given themselves an allowance of £10,000 per year to operate a website (via Osama Saeed).

Although I allow myself to have opinions on the roundup, I thought the diatribe — although apt, given the site move and all — was a bit too much. So I’ve decided to just post it here instead:

Well, the roundup has just moved away from WordPress.com (free) but it still uses WordPress (free, as long as you have the webspace). I’ll let you into a secret — I’ve tacked Scottish Roundup on to the webspace I already owned for my other websites, so all the move cost was just over £6 for the domain name. Last month I paid just over £4.50 for the hosting account for the month (spread across three websites). So you can see, it isn’t expensive stuff.

Maybe an MP would claim that they need to do more complicated things than just a simple blog. But they don’t. A good few MPs have good blogs that work well and communicate their message to constituents. In short, blogs are great. And in a way, they are perfect for politicians. And sure, they might need to have somebody updating the website, but it is hardly a full time occupation.

Head over to WordPress.com or Blogger and set up a perfectly good website for free, rather than claiming £10,000 of taxpayers’ money to build a shoddy out-of-date website (because that’s what most MPs’ websites are).

You might have noticed that over the past few weeks and months I haven’t been posting as often as I used to. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Normally I just dismiss it as a spot of blog depression. I get over it and after a couple of weeks I’m back to my blogging ways again. But this time it’s lasted much longer.

I take back what I said before. Blogging is time consuming. Time is the scarcest resource in the world, and I just don’t have enough spare time to waste on such a pointless activity. I have realised that I really need to get a proper hobby that isn’t just sitting in front of a computer.

University has been getting more stressful. Next year is my final year, and I really don’t want to mess it up. Plus, with work and commuting thrown into the mix, I already have quite enough on my plate without blogging. I want to be able to enjoy myself as well. Summer is also coming up, and I’m not going to waste another one going pale indoors.

So I’m hanging up my keyboard. Of course, you will still be able to find me in many of the usual places — Twitter, del.icio.us, Facebook — I’ll keep all of that up. They are all quick-fire things anyway. It’s this blog which is the really time consuming bit, so I’m calling it a day for this website.

And that goes for the roundup as well. After this morning’s roundup, that’s it. I’ll be happy to pass on the baton to whoever wants it (but who would?).

I just want to say thanks to all of the people who have ever read or commented on this blog. I didn’t quite get to my 2,000^th post on this blog. But as tempting as it was to reach that target, I have too many immediate demands on my time to mess around with something that my heart just isn’t in.

I might return one day, but as I said I have a lot on my plate at the moment so I will take a few months off at least. In the meantime, enjoy some numbers.

150522121701181817

The biggest April Fool is the bastard who invented the thing. Nothing is quite real in this twelve-hour period. I thought I had it covered with my crafty plan to stay in bed until well past noon. But I have already fallen for this one that suggested that the FIA were going to literally turn F1 qualifying into a lottery. My brother gently reminded me what day it is. I didn’t even realise it was past midnight yet.

The thing is, the Pitpass article was actually quite believeable at first, which just shows you how much of a clown Max Mosley is. And not how much of a slow idiot I am, oh no!

Is it really Free Gallery and Subtitle Day on eBay? That one is believable, but we just don’t know because it is April Fool’s Day. That is how foul the first of April is. The government likes to ban things, but it has somehow overlooked this evil day.

I’m sorry I haven’t come up with any great April Fools. I suppose that makes me a Scrooge. Well okay then. I’m a girl. Ha. Got you. Hahah. Now bugger off.

Heh. Well the ‘Beta’ bit is funny.

Boring Boring. Via, uhhh Boing Boing.