Hi WeeClype
Sorry to disappoint you, but yes, this is normal. 
Justine posted about the limitations of the current MN app a few weeks back on this thread- here's what she said:
Yes, you're quite right, the app is a bit limited and certainly not as good as it should be. Apologies for that.
It's been a bit of a development lesson for us, really - we outsourced the development thinking it would be most cost effective and now we're stuck with a huge bill every time we want to make the smallest change to keep it up to date with the site. Consequently we've decided to do two things:
- develop an ad-free native talk app for Mumsnet in-house and charge a subscription for it
- develop a really fabulous Talk mobile site with some app-like functionality that contains ads but free to use.
We want to release these things together so that there's an excellent, viable, free version available at the same time as the subscription, ad-free version.
So all that means that it's a bit of a project. I'm hopeful that we are only weeks off putting out a beta version of the app for testing with a group of users, though. Obviously we'll keep you posted on that. Let me know if you'd like to get a first go at it and be part of the testing group to put it through it's paces.
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So, for the time being, please use the mobile site if the app is driving you up the wall - a much better app will be along shortly 