your wallet is probably not synchronized.
use a working server, such as ecdsa.net.
Thanks for the tip, but I have actually connected to several servers over the past week - currently on Electrum.Online, and appart from a couple that showed as lagging by XX blocks, the wallet has always indicated that it is synced
Oh and the trick of trying to create a new wallet with my original seed, well the install wizard has been at the 'Please wait' screen for over 10 hours now ...
Cheers