Greetings all.

I am updating now as I type this reply. Everything seems fine. I was using a SOCKS5 proxy (just thought i'd try it out) which seems to have been the cause for my requests for files being ignored. Anyway, here is my fix.

Code:
sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf
If you see

Code:
Acquire::http::proxy "http://125.64.96.21:1080/";
or any IP, you can just remove the lines and leave an empty file behind.

A free proxy listed on the web is most certainly going to be used to do bad stuff. This one was flagged on stopforumspam.com or something like that.

Anyway, I hope this helps and thank you all very much for the replies.