Many on the left are parading their anti-racist credentials by applauding the decision.
I've read the tweets and they just read like a pissed up dick-head trying to wind people up.
As far as I'm concerned the acid test for a prison sentence should be if society or communities are threatened to such an extent that prison is the only option to protect the public. In this case, where the threat is moronic racist postings on Twitter, that can't be true.
Along with the over-the-top reactions and wholly disproportionate reactions to tweets and Facebook comments on the riots, I feel the establishment is reacting with paranoia to a new media in a similar way to how it reacted to so-called 'video nasties' of the 80s and 90s.
The left should be extremely careful, what society finds 'offensive' is transitory. For instance, while it was 'ok' and socially acceptable in the popular media to call black people criminal and lazy in the 1970s, today it is similarly ok to tar Liverpudlians (and less so, the entire North) with that same negative stereotype.