Meme-Free Zone

When was the census?

Sunday

When was the first possible mail pickup after the census?

Monday

What's today?

Thursday

Has there possibly been time for the census people to notice that they haven't yet received the form and send a reminder accordingly?

No

So why the @£c* are the census people already sending me reminder messages that could readily be used as proof of address for identity theft etc.?

And why, as a taxpayer, am I funding this nonsense?

Idiots...

On the whole I want to continue to read newsgroups, but Virgin/NTL are really clobbering the speed of NNTP transfers (so much so that they generally time out - I've just set the timeout Turnpike uses to ten minutes, which may fix that part).

What alternatives are there for accessing newsgroups? Not Google Groups, I hasten to add, I loathe the way they're organized.

Later, for anyone who doesn't read the comments The answer turned out to be pretty simple - collect news using the HTTP protocol instead, if the news server allows it.