is the blockchain rammed 24/7 or are there predictable quiet periods?

[European Central Bank]

what with people moaning about slow confirmations and high fees, though i'm sure alot of that is down to our friendly big block spammers, are there consistent periods over 24 hours when there's less transaction pressure when it's better to try and put one through or does the blockchain hum 24/7?

[Kprawn]

The Blockchains runs transactions 24/7 because Bitcoin is a global network. Even if you had "downtime" you will still have a backlog to clear,

when these spam attacks are being done. Last time, the miners cleared most of the backlog in a day or two, which tells me that some of them are

behind this.  ...Why allow a backlog to build up, if you can clear most of these tx's in a day or two?

[lurker10]

Sat-Sun night is predictably quieter. Now that everyone will read this, it will not be.