The Lowdown from Nick Cohen
Get The Lowdown from Nick Cohen as he investigates a world that seems to get ever more crazy, with leading commentators and politicians.
Each week, leading commentator Nick Cohen talks to the country's leading movers and shakers - to cut the through much of the drivel and commentary that passes for so much political discourse these days. Nick - a long-term columnist for The Observer and The Spectator - will be attempting to make sense of our ever stranger and troubling world with insightful politicians, journalists and authors. Our mission is to help keep you sane! So please get The Lowdown from Nick Cohen and subscribe to his Substack column - Writing from London.
The Lowdown from Nick Cohen
Ep17: SLAPP BACK! How the rich abuse British courts with lawyer & author David Hooper
Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from celebrated lawyer and author David Hooper whose latest book, Buying Silence, How oligarchs, corporations and plutocrats use the law to gag their critics (Biteback) exposes how the rich and powerful use vexatious so-called SLAPP legal actions - Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation - to silence and destroy whiste-blowers, journalists and campaigners.
Dodgy chancers from notorious warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin to the corrupt Robert Maxwell have found London courts law firms willing to abuse libel, data and privacy laws to ruin their critics and to deploy any tactics, including the use of private detectives and PR agencies.
David Hooper explains that it is the crippling costs of defending such actions that pose such a threat to press freedom, freedom of speech and to the rule of Law in the UK.
What can be done to counter this threat and why are solicitors and barristers being allowed to get away with such flagrant abuses of behalf of their often dubious clients, that have included sanction Russian oligarchs and even controversial former US presidents?
Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4