Web Analytics - Impact on Performance and Legality

[#1]

I've noticed an interesting thing that happens to a web-site if you enable Web Analytics on the new hosting platform.
After my web-site was moved across, and I changed my DNS settings, I spent some time making changes to the site and tweaking .htaccess to improve its performance.  Then I noticed that Web Analytics wasn't working, so I reported it to PlusNet.  It's now no longer giving me an error message (although it still isn't showing any visit information) - but it's had quite a negative impact on site performance.
For example, on my home-page, turning on Web Analytics adds an extra two HTTP requests, makes the page about 50% larger (presumably because it breaks the compression) and it takes twice as long to load - see the attached screen-shots.
Did the old PlusNet web-stats do this?  Presumably what appears to be a tracking script is illegal under EU law:
http://blog.silktide.com/2012/02/cookie-law-analytics-are-illegal-but-we-wont-prosecute-you-probably...

[#2]

That's an interesting observation.
The Analytics package provided on the new platform is fairly comprehensive and from what I can tell relies on embedding javascript links into your source code. It's up to the user whether or not they want the service enabling.
It will increase page rendering times due to its nature but I wouldn't have expected the delay to be that significant.

Quote from: Andrew

Did the old PlusNet web-stats do this?

No, the old webstats service was based on a simple Webalizer install.

Quote from: Andrew

Presumably what appears to be a tracking script is illegal under EU law:

I'm not convinced it is.