The best way I've found of sorting the email problem is to get a new email address (Hotmail, or a free ISP, ie. Freeserve, Virgin etc.) and have all your ntl email forwarded to that address.
Even when the servers are down for POP'ing into, the mail usually still gets delivered.
I have all mine forwarded to my gmail account and it works a treat.
addition:
I would recommend Virgin or Hotmail too as they both have spam filters
