#TheStateOfBritain

In 1993 when Jason Evans was just four years old his father died from HIV and Hepatitis C.  Jason’s father was one of thousands of people who were infected by contaminated blood in the 1970s and 80s after being treated for haemophilia and other bleeding disorders.   The former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, described the scandal as “a failure of the British state”.  Last year, the government announced it would pay £400 million compensation to victims of the UK’s blood contamination scandal. Jason Evans is the founder and director of the campaign group, Factor 8. He told Tortoise, “the evidence is so damning and the need is so urgent.”  Hepatitis C is a virus which predominantly causes damage to the liver. Left untreated, it can result in liver cancer, cirrhosis, and other conditions. It can often take decades for the severe symptoms of Hepatitis C to become apparent. The virus can lurk in the liver for a long time slowly doing damage. Without treatment HIV will destroy a person’s immune system. Once it has deteriorated to a certain level, people are then classed as having Aids. About 30,000 people are believed to have been infected, either through factor 8 blood products or through blood transfusions.  “Factor concentrates”  are a pharmaceutical product that increasingly began to be used to treat bleeding disorders. The factor concentrates exposed a person to the blood plasma of tens of thousands of people in one shot.  And the sources of plasma that the pharmaceutical companies were using at the time were questionable. Jason told Tortoise, “they were collecting plasma from the prisons in America” and “they were buying in plasma” from the developing world.   Paying for plasma has always been something the NHS is against. “You give people a motivation to lie about their lifestyle and their health status”. But a shortage of factor concentrate produced in the UK meant it was imported.   Previously, people had been treated with cryoprecipitate which is similar to a blood transfusion where a person received one unit from one volunteer donor on the NHS.  For decades, calls for a public inquiry to examine what happened were refused. Margaret Thatcher denied an investigation in the 1980s, as did every subsequent government. When new evidence emerged in 2017, Theresa May announced an inquiry would take place.  The inquiry’s second interim report has now been published, with the third and final part expected later this year.  This episode was written and mixed by Imy Harper.

In 1993 when Jason Evans was just four years old his father died from HIV and Hepatitis C.  Jason’s father was one of thousands of people who were infected by contaminated blood in the 1970s and 80s after being treated for haemophilia and other bleeding disorders.   The former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, described the scandal as “a failure of the British state”.  Last year, the government announced it would pay £400 million compensation to victims of the UK’s blood contamination scandal. Jason Evans is the founder and director of the campaign group, Factor 8. He told Tortoise, “the evidence is so damning and the need is so urgent.”  Hepatitis C is a virus which predominantly causes damage to the liver. Left untreated, it can result in liver cancer, cirrhosis, and other conditions. It can often take decades for the severe symptoms of Hepatitis C to become apparent. The virus can lurk in the liver for a long time slowly doing damage. Without treatment HIV will destroy a person’s immune system. Once it has deteriorated to a certain level, people are then classed as having Aids. About 30,000 people are believed to have been infected, either through factor 8 blood products or through blood transfusions.  “Factor concentrates”  are a pharmaceutical product that increasingly began to be used to treat bleeding disorders. The factor concentrates exposed a person to the blood plasma of tens of thousands of people in one shot.  And the sources of plasma that the pharmaceutical companies were using at the time were questionable. Jason told Tortoise, “they were collecting plasma from the prisons in America” and “they were buying in plasma” from the developing world.   Paying for plasma has always been something the NHS is against. “You give people a motivation to lie about their lifestyle and their health status”. But a shortage of factor concentrate produced in the UK meant it was imported.   Previously, people had been treated with cryoprecipitate which is similar to a blood transfusion where a person received one unit from one volunteer donor on the NHS.  For decades, calls for a public inquiry to examine what happened were refused. Margaret Thatcher denied an investigation in the 1980s, as did every subsequent government. When new evidence emerged in 2017, Theresa May announced an inquiry would take place.  The inquiry’s second interim report has now been published, with the third and final part expected later this year.  This episode was written and mixed by Imy Harper.

In 1993 when Jason Evans was just four years old his father died from HIV and Hepatitis C.  Jason’s father was one of thousands of people who were infected by contaminated blood in the 1970s and 80s after being treated for haemophilia and other bleeding disorders.   The former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, described the scandal as “a failure of the British state”.  Last year, the government announced it would pay £400 million compensation to victims of the UK’s blood contamination scandal. Jason Evans is the founder and director of the campaign group, Factor 8. He told Tortoise, “the evidence is so damning and the need is so urgent.”  Hepatitis C is a virus which predominantly causes damage to the liver. Left untreated, it can result in liver cancer, cirrhosis, and other conditions. It can often take decades for the severe symptoms of Hepatitis C to become apparent. The virus can lurk in the liver for a long time slowly doing damage. Without treatment HIV will destroy a person’s immune system. Once it has deteriorated to a certain level, people are then classed as having Aids. About 30,000 people are believed to have been infected, either through factor 8 blood products or through blood transfusions.  “Factor concentrates”  are a pharmaceutical product that increasingly began to be used to treat bleeding disorders. The factor concentrates exposed a person to the blood plasma of tens of thousands of people in one shot.  And the sources of plasma that the pharmaceutical companies were using at the time were questionable. Jason told Tortoise, “they were collecting plasma from the prisons in America” and “they were buying in plasma” from the developing world.   Paying for plasma has always been something the NHS is against. “You give people a motivation to lie about their lifestyle and their health status”. But a shortage of factor concentrate produced in the UK meant it was imported.   Previously, people had been treated with cryoprecipitate which is similar to a blood transfusion where a person received one unit from one volunteer donor on the NHS.  For decades, calls for a public inquiry to examine what happened were refused. Margaret Thatcher denied an investigation in the 1980s, as did every subsequent government. When new evidence emerged in 2017, Theresa May announced an inquiry would take place.  The inquiry’s second interim report has now been published, with the third and final part expected later this year.  This episode was written and mixed by Imy Harper.

Breakfast ThinkIn: how do we build our way out of this crisis? Our daily digital ThinkIns are exclusively for Tortoise members and their guests.Try Tortoise free for four weeks to unlock your complimentary tickets to all our digital ThinkIns.If you’re already a member and looking for your ThinkIn access code you can find it in the My Tortoise > My Membership section of the app next to ‘ThinkIn access code’.We’d love you to join us.Infrastructure investment was a key part of the government’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda. But that was before C19 hit. If the way we live and work is set to change for good, are our pre-virus assumptions about what we need in terms of energy and transport still true? How should major infrastructure projects be funded now? How can they be greener, faster and create more jobs? And how are these decisions best made?Editor: Matt d’Ancona, Editor and Partner, Tortoise `This ThinkIn is in partnership with EDF.Our invited experts include: Jesse Norman MP, Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire from 2010, Financial Secretary to the Treasury from May 2019.Colin Matthews, Non-Executive Chairman of EDF in the UK, and former Chair of Highways England and Chair of the Highways Agency.Tristia Harrison, CEO TalkTalk.How does a digital ThinkIn work?A digital ThinkIn is like a video conference, hosted by a Tortoise editor, that takes place at the advertised time of the event. Digital ThinkIns are new to Tortoise. Now that our newsroom has closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, we feel it’s more important than ever that we ‘get together’ to talk about the world and what’s going on.The link to join the conversation will be emailed to you after you have registered for your ticket to attend. When you click the link, you enter the digital ThinkIn and can join a live conversation from wherever you are in the world. Doors open at 7:55am for a welcome and briefing. Come early to get settled, meet the team and chat to other members. ThinkIn starts at 8.00am.Members can enter their unique members’ access code to book tickets. Find yours in My Tortoise > My Membership in the Tortoise app.If you have any questions or get stuck, please read our FAQs, or get in touch with us at memberhelp@tortoisemedia.com What is a Tortoise ThinkIn?A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. It is a place where everyone has a seat at the (virtual) table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise.How we work with partners We want to be open about the business model of our journalism, too. At Tortoise, we don’t take ads. We don’t want to chase eyeballs or sell data. We don’t want to add to the clutter of life with ever more invasive ads. We think that ads force newsrooms to produce more and more stories, more and more quickly. We want to do less, better.Our journalism is funded by our members and our partners. We are establishing Founding Partnerships with a small group of businesses willing to back a new form of journalism, enable the public debate, share their expertise and communicate their point of view. Those companies, of course, know that we are a journalistic enterprise. Our independence is non-negotiable. If we ever have to choose between the relationship and the story, we’ll always choose the story.We value the support that those partners give us to deliver original reporting, patient investigations and considered analysis.We believe in opening up journalism so we can examine issues and develop ideas for the 21st Century. We want to do this with our members and with our partners. We want to give everyone a seat at the table.

A writer with first hand experience talks about life in the gutter of austerity Our daily digital ThinkIns are exclusively for Tortoise members and their guests.Try Tortoise free for four weeks to unlock your complimentary tickets to all our digital ThinkIns.If you’re already a member and looking for your ThinkIn access code you can find it in the My Tortoise > My Membership section of the app next to ‘ThinkIn access code’.We’d love you to join us.In her extraordinary first book, Skint Estate, Cash Carraway details the day-to-day realities of living in poverty in the UK between 2010-2019. Bringing poetry and humour to the starkest of circumstances – staying in a women’s refuge whilst pregnant, working in peepshows, visiting food banks and suffering domestic violence – Cash’s heart-wrenching account is moving and inspiring in equal parts, told with dark wit and resilience. Cash takes us from council house childhood to single motherhood, working multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and temporary accommodation, finding lifelines in her love for her daughter, community and friendships. Skint Estate is a call-to-action, shedding light on what life is like for millions of people living in poverty in the UK today.Chair: Liz Moseley, Editor and Partner, Tortoise Buy the book here Our special guest is: Cash Carraway, an award-winning playwright, author and screenwriter from London. How does a digital ThinkIn work?A digital ThinkIn is like a video conference, hosted by a Tortoise editor, that takes place at the advertised time of the event. Digital ThinkIns are new to Tortoise. Now that our newsroom has closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, we feel it’s more important than ever that we ‘get together’ to talk about the world and what’s going on.The link to join the conversation will be emailed to you after you have registered for your ticket to attend. When you click the link, you enter the digital ThinkIn and can join a live conversation from wherever you are in the world. Members can enter their unique members’ access code to book tickets. Find yours in My Tortoise > My Membership in the Tortoise app.If you have any questions or get stuck, please read our FAQs, or get in touch with us at memberhelp@tortoisemedia.comWhat is a Tortoise ThinkIn?A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. It is a place where everyone has a seat at the (virtual) table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise.

How is Grimsby coping during the coronavirus crisis? What are the local stories which we are missing in the national coverage?