Yeah those awards are bs...
I totally understand and your right to do so, if stuff goes unsaid it don't ever get thought about or action-ed upon.
As for the speeds returning to normal, there will definitely be improvement when people start living again but as you say, life isn't going back to normal for a long time if it ever does....
I think a lot of people will be moved out of the office and to the home office after restrictions lift, peoples habits will remain changed so might not be many people heading out on the town as there used to be, the way the internet is used has changed in the past year and its not going to just go back to what it was,
Virgin needs to catch the hell up, these utilization issue have been problems forever and unless Virgin moves fast to newer technology and doesn't keep half arsing things they won't ever catchup.
My advice for you as a gamer is ditch Virgin and get yourself with another provider, the issues your facing aren't going anywhere soon and cable broadband sucks for latency anyway specially on the hubs supplied across the world these days.