SEVEN-DAY POSTIES
Sunday mail service will deliver the goods for online shoppers
THE Royal Mail is set to do Sunday deliveries for the first time in its 505-year history.
A seven-day service trial is being launched with “major UK retailers” after a surge in online shopping during the pandemic.
The rollout of Sunday deliveries starts next month and will expand further across the UK as more retailers sign up.
Royal Mail said: “The trial is the first salvo in Royal Mail’s move to tap into the seven-daya-week delivery market. More and more consumers expect Sunday deliveries as part of the online shopping experience.”
Royal Mail parcel deliveries hit a record 496 million in the three months to December 27, 2020.
To cope with demand, Royal Mail is also building its second, and largest, parcel distribution centre in Daventry, Northants.
The site, the size of 10 football pitches, will handle more than a million packages a day.
Nick Landon, chief commercial officer at Royal Mail, said: “The UK already trusts us to deliver their purchases six days a week.
“We always listen to our customers and the ask here was clear – we love what you do Monday to Saturday, so please do the same on a Sunday.”
ROMAN Kemp has told how his mum “saved him” from suicide as a struggling teenager.
The TV and radio star, 28, credits Shirlie Holliman for making him open up – and revealed he has been taking antidepressants since he was 15.
But he said he did not speak to his Spandau Ballet star dad Martin about his problems as he feared he would not understand.
In a BBC documentary about mental health, Roman said he reached a low point in his late teens.
“My mum saved my life,” he said. “She made me open up so much as a kid and made me talk to her and literally forced me to tell her how I was feeling.
“I talked to her about the lowest point I’ve been in and about having thoughts I shouldn’t be having. What I realised is these are quite common thoughts that one in four men have. She pulled me out of that when I was at my absolute low.”
Roman was spurred into making the film about the growing mental health struggles faced by young men after losing his best friend, producer Joe Lyons, last year. He admitted to being
“terrified” about speaking up, but felt he owed it to his friend.
Roman said: “I had no idea he was struggling. For a long time I felt a lot of anger. That’s your best friend. That’s your brother. I’ve this huge thing where I was like, why didn’t you pick up the phone?”
He admitted: “It’s something I have never truly opened up to my dad about. Just that fear he would not understand.
“But I’m so lucky – he is still so there for me. Still tells me he loves me every day.”
In the film he talks to youngsters who have lost friends to depression and accompanies medics on calls to teenagers as young as 13. Roman is calling for lessons on the subject after learning that 50% of schools do not have any form of counselling for struggling children. “This needs to be in schools from kindergarten, let alone GCSE PSHE [Personal, Social, Health and Economic] lessons,” he said.
“If I get one message that says, ‘Cheers, mate, that really helped,’ you’ve won.”
Roman Kemp: Our Silent Emergency, BBC1, Tuesday, 9pm (BBC3 from 6am).
A MAN who murdered his girlfriend’s toddler son while she was at the hairdressers will spend at least 19 years behind bars.
Jonathan Simpson, 25, was jailed for life yesterday for killing 22-month-old Jacob Marshall.
Jury members were in tears as Emma Marshall, 23, the little boy’s mum, read an emotional tribute to her son.
She said her life was “changed forever” after her “happy” and “boisterous” Jacob died in July 2019.
“I made a decision to leave my baby Jacob in the care of Jonathan Simpson and that is something I will regret for the rest of my life,” she said.
“I do want to know what happened to Jacob but at the same time I don’t want to know as I can’t stand the thought that Jacob may have been frightened, may have been asking for me, whether he was aware of what had happened to him and whether he had suffered.
“I don’t know whether I would be able to deal with this.”
Jacob died in hospital after being found with a “catalogue of injuries” at her home in Speke, Liverpool.
Simpson, who had convictions for 31
previous offences, was found guilty of murder following a trial at the city’s crown court.
Sentencing yesterday, the Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Andrew Menary, said: “Only you know precisely what you did that afternoon to hurt Jacob in this way and you have chosen, cruelly and cowardly, to keep that a murky secret.”
He said Simpson had “lied and lied again about the cause of Jacob’s death.”
And he added: “You have not shown a jot of regret or remorse about any aspect of the case other than fury about being arrested in the first place.”
The court heard Simpson, originally from Winsford, Cheshire, had moved in with Miss Marshall in June 2019 after they began a relationship the previous month.
She left the toddler in Simpson’s care on the afternoon of July 12, while she went out.
In a statement read to court, Jacob’s grandmother, Christine Parkinson, described Simpson as a “monster”.
She said: “Jonathan Simpson took our baby boy from us and we are just heartbroken. He was such an innocent little boy with his whole life in front of him.”
Only you know how you hurt Jacob... and you’ve kept it a secret
JUDGE ANDREW MENARY TO SIMPSON