COMRADES, before I reveal the total of this week’s postbag, are you up for the 250-pound challenge?

No, I’m not promoting a crash diet for rotund revolutionaries who want to fight the flab. 

If health and fitness is what you’re looking for, I’d recommend you join our cycling heroes on next year’s Pedal4Progress fundraiser.

On that note, the Paddington branch of the RMT sent £500 and urged our panting pedallists to “keep up the revolutions per minute.”

Among the many readers inspired by our cyclists was a North Ayrshire comrade who gave £50 for the paper “that sticks up for the ordinary person in the street.”

£50 came from the CWU Preston Brook branch in honour of the rider Peter Middleman. 

A tenner arrived from a reader in Rhyl. And Unison’s Halton branch sent a very welcome £500.

But back to the challenge, which has been set by a couple in Faringdon who sent me £250. 

“If this sum is matched by another supporter,” they wrote, “then we will gladly send you another £250.”

Will you pick up the Faringdon mantle and double your donation to Britain’s only socialist daily?

If that’s beyond the width of your wallet in these hard times, how about sending me £100 for the 100-mile ride I’m doing on Sunday week in Hertfordshire? 

Or £15 for the Labour councillor I’ll be riding with, in recognition of the 15 pounds he’s lost since we started training. 

Heading south-west to Poole in Dorset, a reader sent £100 for “the only national publication that sympathises with the Palestinians and is prepared to call out Israel for their unacceptable behaviour.” 

A Croydon comrade sent £250 in memory of his “lovely mother, Molly Green, who didn’t read the Star but the Daily Mail instead!” 

And a big hug to the Hammersmith supporter who sent me £100 and a homemade card with a star inside a heart. 

£13 from a reader in Barnsley, £99 from Glasgow, and £1,000 from west London helped bring this week’s postbag up to a very encouraging £5,180.

Comrades, we have nine days left to raise nine grand and record yet another triumph for the paper that refuses to lay down and die. With your help we can do it.

Calvin Tucker is Morning Star campaigns manager.

Please make cheques made payable to: The People’s Press Printing Society and post to: The Morning Star appeal, William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, London E3 2NS.

Bank transfer to Payee: The People’s Press Printing Society Account, Bank: The Co-operative Bank PLC Bank Branch: Islington Sort Code: 089033 Account Number: 50505115, Reference: Appeal (Or P4P8 if the donation is for the Pedal for Progress event raising money for this appeal)

Or to donate online, please click here.