Man handed 20-month jail sentence for stirring up hate on Facebook

And there we have it: the first person to be charged with intending to stir up racial hatred online has now been jailed for 20 months. 28-year-old Jordan Parlour pleaded guilty to charges put to him at Leeds magistrates’ court on Tuesday, confessing in court to having taken to Facebook during the recent unrest to rile up rioters. His own city Leeds saw approximately 400 people turn out last weekend and cause chaos on the streets – with a local hotel manager having to put his business into lockdown after rioters pelted it with stones and smashed windows. Good heavens…

But while the court heard Parlour was at home at the time with a broken heel, he was still engaging with what was going on. Taking to the social media platform between 1-5 August, the Leeds man told people online that ‘every man and his dog should smash [the] f*** out of Britannia hotel’ – amongst other rather unsavoury posts.