Thank you once again for trying David. Sadly I have to report another failure. Firstly the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 does not contain the lines
CODE
RESOLV_MODS=yes
DNS1=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
DNS2=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
So I can't delete them and secondly when I remove 'resolvconf' from startup in MCC all I get is a nameserver of 10.11.12.13. This is obviously even more useless than my ISP's own offering.
But to save you wracking your brains again let me say this. As I posted earlier, I have already solved this problem using OpenSuse. The trouble is though that it doesn't make any difference. Before I switched Suse to Opendns, my browser used to stall for ages 'looking up xxxxxxxxxx". It no longer does this but goes straight to 'waiting for xxxxxxxxxx' and stalls for just as long. In other words it doesn't really matter if the Dns server is quick because the connection isn't and that is that, end of story.
I guess I will just have to live with these slow connections until I get somewhere where there is a sensible connection or I go home an start using adsl again.
But thank you for trying anyway, much appreciated.