Sic transit Google

The past few days - since Wednesday afternoon, to my knowledge - I've had a completely creaky internet connection. It seems slightly better today, but not well enough to make web use anything but frustrating. Pages time out before loading; I have to make several attempts to load perfectly ordinary sites; Google is hopeless and Flickr not much better. I know of one other household, also on BT and also in my area, where they are suffering this problem, and it's happening to the two computers at The Blethers.

Any comment on this from all you more savvy users?