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THE APPEAL total reached £98,048.27 at the beginning of this week. That does not include thousands of pounds which was pledged in sponsorship for dozens of fundraising events which took place on Sunday. Some 25 Socialist Worker readers cycled from Cambridge to London (60 miles!), raising over £2,000 in sponsorship.

"I FEEL ashamed to say that I'm a member of the London Labour Party. The shenanigans that are taking place to stop Ken from becoming mayor are a disgrace. This has nothing to do with democratic socialism. It is more like Stalin's Russia."

Sales of Socialist Worker outside workplaces are gathering strength. Last week in central London 14 were sold at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, 9 at Mount Pleasant post office and 5 at the Westminster site of the Jubilee Line Extension. In the north east 15 papers were sold at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary with £15 collected for the Socialist Worker Appeal and £11 at Sunderland Civic Centre where 11 was collected. In Manchester 16 papers were sold at the town hall, 12 at Oldham Road post office and 8 at the Marks and Spencer construction site. In Bristol sales included 11 at the Avonmouth Bridge site and 9 at the central telephone exchange, while on Merseyside 15 were sold at

"YOU CAN stick Loaded magazine up your arse!" "What do we want? Liberation!" That's what 600 students chanted as they marched for women's rights through the streets of east London on Wednesday of last week.

POSTAL WORKERS at the giant Mount Pleasant office in central London are waiting to hear if their site is to lose 1,600 jobs. Royal Mail plans to shift most of Britain's international mail work to a new "greenfield" site at Langley near Slough in Berkshire. That would mean huge job losses at Mount Pleasant - and at Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Reading and Dover. The key date is 15 November when the Royal Mail board meets.

THE POLICE Complaints Authority is to investigate eight officers who were called to investigate a racist attack on a black college lecturer but who then, allegedly, beat up the lecturer. Denese Mapp is a science lecturer at Haringey College in north London. She says she phoned the police after a man threatened her with a knife and shouted racist abuse at her family.

Tony Blair and his cronies are out to block Ken Livingstone from becoming London mayor. Only last week Neil Kinnock, former Labour Party leader, said: "When people get down to remembering Ken's real record as the man who brought about the destruction of the Greater London Council, the man who invented the London loony left, then they'll say we really don't want this guy to represent the greatest city in the world."

WHEN I started work as a civil servant at the London Passport Office 18 years ago I made the terrible mistake of believing I was going up in the world. I arrived at work wearing my best suit. I got the shock of my life. Everyone else was wearing jeans. All I did all day was stamp passports. I was part of a clerical production line.

IN THE summer of 1889 the London Evening News and Post reported on the huge strike wave then sweeping the capital. The Bryant and May match girls' strike a year earlier had been, it concluded, "the proverbial small spark" which had "kindled a great fire".

HUNDREDS OF Parcelforce workers struck unofficially for two days at the Canning Town site in east London last week. They won brilliant solidarity from other depots. But national union officials condemned their action. Then they narrowly persuaded a mass meeting to agree a return to work with very little gained from management. A CWU union member at Canning Town Parcelforce told Socialist Worker, "We have been shunted back to work when with a bit more support from the top we could have won."

"I'LL GO anywhere in the world to get this out in the open." Those are the words of Jim Stanley - brother of Harry Stanley, who was killed by police in east London.

THE SACKED Lufthansa Sky Chefs workers at Heathrow airport in west London are planning a number of events to mark the anniversary of their dispute. The workers have been fighting for their jobs for one year, after being ruthlessly sacked for taking part in a legal one day strike.