1 year on and still having latency issues in the evenings

[#1]

I think the high pings to the Techicolour router are a characteristic of their routers.
Try pinging the router directly and you should get a totally different result.  (ping 192.168.1.254 -n 100)

[#2]

So is there a way i can connect to my router via ethernet  but without the cables? i have heard people mention plug networks but i dont know how that works,
Anyone got any ideas?
And for the record i switched from using the router i was given by plusnet to the homehub to try to improve my connection but it doesnt seem to have made any difference at all
The wireless adapter i am using in my pc is a USB dongle type by Belkin

[#3]

You can buy HomePlugs which use your power cables as the network connection.
How far are you from your router?
The wireless router you use can make a big difference. I am 20m from my Asus router (with brick/padstone walls in between) and these are the ping results to my router:
--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
50 packets transmitted, 50 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.753/0.951/3.065/0.391 ms