The Core

Not sure if it's my local connection of a routing issue, but am finding the net to be very slow, and Google won't even load up for me. Or Youtube. Pages with Adsense are dragggggggging and only eventually display sans Adsense.

I'd be tempted to think that Google or Akamai might be under DDoS attack tonight - but Alertra shows Google.co.uk should be up fine.

If this is a routing issue, it's one helluva stinker by BT.

I would just how local it is?

EDIT: I can get Amazon. But not Facebook. Or even Bing. Even th3core is slow, but it loads - the others do not.

BT are having problems with their network and it's effecting certain locations across the UK, and considering most ISP rent from BT/openreach its affect other providers.
http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/service_status_consumer/ss_cat/2468,2470
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5293-bt-equipment-failures-cause-outages-in-sheffield-and-london.html

Last week, everyone in my town were having problems connecting and getting dropouts left right and centre, very annoying

I always have trouble when it rains, but that's not something you can fix?