Unless you read this

Well it is for saving you money! ( as long as you are on a market 3 exchange ). I changed from PAYG at the beginning of the month and so far haven't noticed any difference, apart from I'm almost £9 / month better off, well £6 actually cos I'd already signed up for the £3 off offer.
I use my connection mainly for surfing, email and broadband phone, none of which are affected by the change in traffic shaping moving from PAYG to Value.
I do, however, use VPN to the office when I work from home. The throttling to 512k doesn't really make any difference since the uplink speed on the office connection is only 832k. I've used the VPN quite a bit this week and TBH I cant really tell any difference from when I was on PAYG. I guess if where your VPN endpoint is has a nice fast connection to the internet, then you will notice the difference.

Just like dial-up. 

Sadly, EnglishMohican has pretty much summed up the sad state of affairs.
Couldn't have put it better myself.

Any justification for the whopping 1.5 year contracts, or when the so-called monthly ones may transpire?

Thanks PlusNet

Overdue, but makes up for the recent phone costs cockup and much appreciated.

Cheers