It was not unexpected, it was still a kick in the guts. When the judge accepted the tweet to be menacing in her judgement yesterday morning I think a lot of hope of a favourable outcome disappeared. 

But such a long deliberation after lunch, hopes were raised again, surely after this amount of time the appeal would be successful? It’s common sense, of course it was a joke, of course there was no menace, the airport didn’t consider it a threat, the police felt there was no threat,surely, surely surely common sense would prevail. Not guilty, it has to be not guilty, it has to be overturned. Surely?

Then the first tweet came through:

@Gaijinsan21 Appeal rejected.

The judge upheld the original conviction and it hurt, it hurt like hell. The judge’s ruling was a damning one,and as @pauljchambers tweeted himself “……although this judgement wasn’t as unexpected as the first one, it hurts more.” 

It is not yet known if Paul can appeal further, that will be known next week, and I don’t know if he will appeal further, I don’t know how much fight is left in him, I don’t know if I could go through what Paul, Sarah and their friends and families have gone through this whole year and then choose to keep going through it.

People have been donating, and faster than they did after the original verdict, and the fine, including an extra £2,000 in costs, was covered within an hour. Stephen Fry has once again volunteered to pay whatever fine is imposed, an incredibly generous offer in a sea of generous donations. (nearly 800 people have donated since I set up the fund) but the conviction, the conviction is still there.

His livelihood is gone, he has lost 2 jobs to this thing. It has altered his life, and the lives of those he loves and it will affect him for years to come, will come back to haunt him long after Twitter itself has gone the way of Myspace. 

This could have been me, and it could have been you, yesterday affected so many people because yesterday a judge held us all in contempt, and we all felt it. And it hurt.