Thug who stoked fire at asylum seeker hotel given longest riot sentence yet

A thug who stoked a fire outside an asylum seekers’ hotel has been jailed for nine years. It is the longest sentence yet in the wake of the riots that followed the killing of three girls in Southport. The judge told Thomas Birley, 27, his case was unquestionably the most serious to come before him. In late July, disorder broke out across Britain after online posts wrongly suggested the Southport suspect was an asylum seeker. Birley was spotted adding wood to a fire in an industrial bin which had been...