very slow

Seems fine to me (I have broadband but this should be irrelevant if site itself is slow). The act that your cursor is going loopy suggests that (don't take this the wrong way ) your machine is at fault, running too many processes at the same time. This could be due to too many programs running concurrently for your processor (I would download AdAware (www.lavasoftusa.com) and check for spyware).

When I ping the server I get a response time of 30 milliseconds (see below) which works out the same as a test on bbc.com, with google.com coming back on 90MS and bmw.co.uk timing out 9not responding).

C:\>ping bmwcarclubgb.co.uk

Pinging bmwcarclubgb.co.uk [212.100.226.230] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.100.226.230: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.100.226.230: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.100.226.230: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.100.226.230: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 212.100.226.230:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 30ms, Maximum =  31ms, Average =  30ms

Mine's fine too.

paid? Mine is the  free version.
Anyway, its a great package but you do have to check your system every month or so - its amazing the amount of crap that gets onto your system while you are surfing.
I also have ZoneAlarm - a free personal firewall from www.zonelabs.com and I can stop spyware applications going online from my system as it asks me if I want to let them online 9also stops outsiders coming in)