I'm no fan of the justice system and I don't believe Lucy Connolly should be in prison.

But for context, Connolly posted about burning down hotels housing asylum seekers at a time when people in this country were actually setting fire to hotels where asylum seekers lived. Setting fire to buildings knowing people were inside them. Thats a very serious crime and inciting people to do that is also quite rightly a serious crime. This on the back of fake news that an asylum seeker had murdered three children in Southport. It was rightly acknowledged that a lot of the riots and disorder were sparked by false information and incitement on social media, which is why so many of the people that turned out to smash their (or somebody elses) town up knew exactly where to be at the same time as a load of other people intent on doing the same thing.

The social media posts at that time, misguided mistakes or not, were having a live time and dangerous impact on our society. The times are indeed a changing because social media is sadly a sign of the times today. People live their lives on it and believe whatever narrative that suits their agenda, because social media is actively peddling every agenda if you know where to look.

The harsh sentences were imposed as a way to deter people from doing this in the future. The same was done in 2011 when mobs amassed to smash up their local Co-Op on the back of the Mark Duggan shooting in 2011

Then we have Vylan, a singer who started a chant at a festival, attended mostly by middle aged people in a mid life crisis and bored students who might get round to waving a few angrily worded placards on a warm afternoon. Or if they really care might throw some paint on a statue or glue themselves to a viaduct. The chant was indeed hateful and should be investigated, if the hate crime standards are to be followed, but the real term consequences of this were what exactly? Assembling a few angry 40 somethings who had three days thinking it was the 90s again to stand up and take on the Israeli Defence Forces? Good luck with that.