The majority of countries, and the uk for sure, its not illegal to download content but it is illegal to upload it / share it. Therefore using usenet is fine to do, legally, without the aid of a VPN as you are merely consuming and not providing or uploading. I have been doing this for years with zero problem or letter from any of three isps i have been with the in last decade.

I have all my services set up on a docker container that has a VPN Killswitch, so if the VPN ever drops for any reason my "activity" is disabled automatically until I can notice and fix it.

It's all direct download and https from what I understand, so all anyone can see is that you went to the sites, not what you download.