Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011
Commencement address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005

The 'precogs' in Minority Report

About seventy new people are detained under IPPs each month.  After serving the time deemed by the judge to be appropriate to their crime, they continue to be held in prison not for any crime they have committed, but against the possibility that they might commit a crime in the future.  They face the Kafka-esque burden of proving that they will not commit a crime if they are released, reversing the assumption of innocent until proven guilty.

The government has announced a review of indeterminate sentences. Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, said this on 21 June:

That is why, as the Prime Minister confirmed this morning, we are reviewing so-called indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection, with a view to replacing them with a more sensible, tough system of long, determinate sentences.

The Labour Party Shadow Justice Secretary has reacted:

We will not accept plans that water-down the protection given to the public by Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection.

We must hope that this form of words (‘not accept plans that water down protection’) has been carefully chosen not to preclude abolishing IPPs provided they are replaced with suitable sentences for serious offenders.

Kenneth Clarke is right to be trying to reform sentencing policy in general, and to get rid of IPPs.  I appreciate that it is Labour’s job to be the opposition, and they no doubt believe that many of their supporters would like to see tougher sentencing.   But I also think most people take their civil liberties seriously and fear an over-powerful state.

My father has been working tirelessly to get this unfair practice stopped (see here and here) and I’m proud of his determination and his willingness to stand up for justice.  IPPs are not supported by any of the professional groups, from prison governors to penal reform campaigners.  They have an appalling impact on the lives of some very vulnerable people.    Locking people up in case they commit a crime in future, and putting the burden on them to prove that they will not, is no part of British tradition or of British values.

I have written to my MP about this, asking him to support the abolition of indeterminate sentences. I hope you will take five minutes to do so too (just click here.)

Eight million children die each year before their fifth birthday, mainly of easily preventable and treatable diseases. About 1.6 million children under five die of pneumonia, and 1.3 million of diarrheoal diseases. These diseases two account for three times as many deaths as malaria and HIV combined.

Save the Children are right to highlight the success of vaccines to combat these preventable deaths. And they are right to emphasize the need for donors to give enough money to the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization (GAVI) to enable it to fund more vaccinations. GAVI says that it needs $500m a year more to enable it to provide existing and new vaccines. Donors should come to the London meeting in June 2011 ready to pledge it.

I am not however persuaded by SCF’s call to “bring down vaccine prices”. They should be careful what they wish for. If prices for vaccines used in developing countries are too low, pharmaceutical companies are less likely to develop new vaccines for diseases predominantly in developing countries and less likely to manufacture such vaccines in large quantities. If anything, we should be trying to sustain vaccine prices at a reasonable level which provides a decent return to vaccine manufacturers who get involved in these markets. I have no quibble with any measures to reduce the actual cost of those vaccines (eg by reducing unnecessary regulation or by reducing uncertainty) but it would be unwise of donors to use their monopsony purchasing power to make the production of vaccines for developing countries more unattractive for pharmaceutical companies. We want vaccines to be affordable, but it is likely that subsidies are a better way for donors to do this than by limiting the economic value of this market.

The SCF is also wrong to call for an end to health worker recruitment by developed countries from developing countries. First, we do not know whether this kind of migration reduces or increases the number of health workers in developing countries. There is a positive relationship between the number of African health workers inside a particular country and the number of health workers from that country working abroad, which suggests that the opportunity to emigrate may play a role in recruiting more people to the health professions, more than compensating for the number of people who end up emigrating. Second, this kind of regulation is not an effective way of influencing the migration choices of skilled workers: we should instead be asking how the health system would need to change for them to want to stay. Third, this treats health workers as a human resource not as human beings. Why should they be denied the opportunity to make their own lives better, if that is what they choose to do?

Not every country is constrained by lack of money; but some clearly are. Ethiopia, where I live, is a case in point. Health spending per person is about $30 per person per year; and of that, the government spending is about $17 per person. With a committed Minister, the government has achieved an extraordinary amount with very little money, especially through the introduction of health extension workers, but they could clearly do so much more if they had more money to spend. Save the Children is absolutely right to call for long-term commitments of funding for health systems to enable governments to increase these basic health services.

Well done to Save the Children for starting this campaign: it is a global scandal that so many children die of easily preventable and treatable diseases. As Save the Children rightly says, we should mobilise funding for vaccines and improve the provision of long-term funding for health systems.

we are working to save lives orphans in south Ethiopia, Wolaita. but still we don’t have our own website to spread our works  and sounds of orphans. please try your best to help us.

I don’t know anything about this organisation but it sounds like a worthy cause. If anyone out there would like to help them to develop a website, please let me know and I’ll pass on the email address.

Update: a tech entrepreneur has very kindly volunteered to help.