I haven't played in a long while so I thought I'd get on and I couldn't connect to any of the minecraft servers, I just get a red screen saying failed to connect.... so I followed this 
http://www.worldofminecraft.com/content/java-7-and-World of Minecraft-clientclassic-minecraft to try and fix it. I uninstalled Java 7 and downloaded java 6 via the link in the thread yet the problem still continues.