It wasn’t all bad

A 15-year-old music fan from Croydon came home earlier this month to find Stormzy repainting his bedroom. The rapper, 26, had volunteered to paint Ishae Montaque’s bedroom to highlight the work of The Good Guys – a local decorating firm which runs a “give back” scheme for young people growing up in poverty, or with mental illness. Montaque had been selected because of the “positive behaviour” he’d shown since starting at a new school.

A group of teenage girls in Afghanistan has designed and built a working prototype for a cheap, lightweight ventilator to treat Covid-19 patients. Whereas UK firms spent millions developing their prototypes, the members of the 20-strong robotics team, aged 15 to 17, spent less than £550, most of which went on old car parts. Afghanistan’s health service is extremely overstretched: it has just 200 ventilators for a population of 37 million. The team, known as the Afghan Dreamers and based in the western city of Herat, was founded three years ago by Roya Mahboob, an Afghan IT entrepreneur and activist who is now resident in the US.

Offering prisoners unlimited toast and jam appears to have reduced violent incidents at HMP Lincoln by 11%. Inspectors from the Independent Monitoring Board say the toast created a “homely smell” and a “relatively relaxed ambience on the wings”. In most jails, inmates are given only a cold breakfast pack, containing bread, crackers and cereal, which is often handed out the day before. At Lincoln, the number of prisoners on the “basic incentives scheme” has also halved, indicating a general improvement in behaviour.