Donations still pouring in

The strike fund is still going strong. Today we had £180 donated by one good friend of the union and about £50 from members of the public, no doubt helped by Daniel's fine fiddling.

Yesterday afternoon, Richard Edwards of the Leeds NUJ Branch paid a visit to our picket line. He had whip-round among his workmates at the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post which raised an extra £138 for our strike fund. This was incredible given that the chapel and branch had together already donated £750. So we owe a big thank you to Leeds members.

This all takes our total of received and pledged donations to somewhere near £3,600 - a simply incredible figure. We never expected to received such wonderful solidarity, so thank you all.

Minster fire alert scoop for NUJ journalists

Another exclusive for strike paper The Stress's reporters...

HUNDREDS of York residents and tourists looked on as emergency services swooped on the city's Minster this afternoon. Four fire engines and police rushed to the historic church shortly before 5pm after the fire alam sounded. After an anxious examination of the building it was found to have been a false alarm. It was believed to have been sparked by either bellringers or workmen disturbing dust in the bell tower. NUJ journalists were on the scene and pictures will follow soon. Where were The Press? Remember, you read it here first.

Picture copyright NUJ Newsquest York Chapel. All rights reserved.

General Secretary joins picket line

On the third day of our strike, picketers were in bouyant mood as we were accompanied by violin and guitar outside Newsquest York's offices.

We started at 8.30am and were joined by the NUJ's General Secretary Jeremy Dear, pictured, who emphasised we had the full support of the union behind us.

Richard Foster, a subeditor at The Press and composer of our strike ballad, was joined by his son and fiddler Daniel to keep our spirits high at the mid-point of our five-day action. He played a range of Scottish, Irish and even Norwegian fiddle tunes to keep the line's feet tapping. Then we had a number of rousing renditions of our strike song Things I Learnt This Year.

Members of the NUT and Unison joined us to help hand our fliers and press our case. At noon the group of about 15 union members headed into the city centre and set up our stall on Parliament Street. We handed out copies of our strike newspaper The Stress - today with an exclusive York Knights rugby league story - and encouraged shoppers to sign our petition demanding Newsquest give us a fair pay rise.

We will be back again tomorrow to show there will be no let up in our demand for fair pay . To see highlights from today, watch this video: