Winston sticks it where the sun don't shine

This story is a bloody marvelous illustration of how, despite claims from some quarters, the internet revolution has not quite made it to even quite developed parts of the globe. A South African IT company based in Durban raced "an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom."

Guess who won! Winston, the aforementioned pigeon, took two hours to fly 60 miles with the stick whilst the file was only 4% of the way there. Frankly Winston could have walked the stick home and he'd have still won.

I only mention it because Winston has demonstrated with admirable clarity what I was arguing in the Morning Star in July that Africa is not witnessing "a new dawn of connectivity for the masses" despite the inflated claims about the new undersea cable that's just been hooked up.

It's also nice to see people use inventive media stunts to giving big companies the bird. That's a real feather in their cap! OK, I'll stop there.

Anyway, why take it from them when you can check out Winston's website and hear it straight from the pigeon's beak (check out the video, hilarious).