Katie Hopkins is this afternoon whacked with a bill for £24,000 in damages and at least £107,000 in costs for two tweets to food blogger Jack Monroe. Hopkins “confused” Monroe with Laurie Penny, according to The Guardian, to whom she had meant to tweet about vandalism of a war memorial during an anti-austerity protest (Penny had said she “didn’t have a problem” with the action). Monroe gave Hopkins the chance to apologise for erroneously directing tweets to her: “public apology + £5K to migrant rescue and I won’t sue.” But the former Apprentice contestant and Mail columnist instead doubled down and called Monroe “social anthrax”. Katie Hopkins doesn’t apologise…

A weary Mr Justice Warby used his judgement to slap down both parties in turn:

“The case could easily have been resolved at an early stage. There was an open offer to settle for £5,000. It was a reasonable offer… The costs would have been a fraction of those which I am sure these parties have incurred in the event… The second point is that there have been difficulties over disclosure especially on the claimant’s side… Ms Monroe’s Twitter records were extensively deleted…”

The real winners here are the lawyers…