In March I took the opportunity of a job move from the University of Oxford to the University of York to take nearly three months off so I could work almost full time on Politicalbetting.com during the General Election.

That period is now coming to an end as I start in my new role next week. This means that the site will revert to what it was before – something that I do in my spare time. I won’t normally be in a position to monitor the discussions or betting markets during the day-time. An area that users might find frustrating is the spam-trap and it could be that legitimate comments get held up for several hour. My apologies.

Before the General Election I had feared that the all-party nature of the site’s forums might not have stood the tensions of the run-up to polling day. It is quite a tribute to those who have participated that I only had to intervene on about half a dozen occasions and Politicalbetting.com remained a place for civilised discussion on betting and political outcomes.

Mike Smithson