tabs lillingston

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

There is a war being waged on the British livestock farm, and it does not arrive with banners. It arrives as paperwork.

A consultation document. A revised subsidy scheme. A carbon target buried in an appendix. A planning approval signed in Westminster while the farmer is out before dawn at a hard lambing. No single blow looks fatal. Each can be defended as sensible, green, forward-thinking. Together, they shrink the way Britain has fed itself for a thousand years.

The numbers are already moving. In the mid-1980s Britain grew around 78% of its own food. Today it is nearer 60%, and falling. The government's own climate advisers want cattle and sheep cut by 27% by 2040. The inheritance tax shield that kept family farms whole since 1992 has been torn up. Roughly a tenth of England's farmland is pencilled in to leave food production by 2050.

The story sold to the public is that this is the price of saving the planet, the cow giving ground so the country can hit net zero. It sounds noble in a press release and falls apart in a wet field in February.

Because the land most under pressure can grow nothing else, and the farms being squeezed are families on the edge, out in all weathers for a wage that would shame a shelf-stacker, carrying one of the heaviest mental loads of any job in the country. They feed us, and have for generations. The food we stop growing does not vanish. It is grown elsewhere, usually dirtier, and shipped back, while we grow more dependent.

This is a thread of true stories about what net zero is actually doing to British farmers and their animals.

When we drive the sheep off a British hill in the name of the climate, where do we imagine dinner is going to come from instead?

[Goffs @Goffs1866]

#GoffsOrby grad MISS LADY GRACE justifies favouritism to win @Goodwood_Races for @DHorsfordRacing, R Martin & Mrs J Martin

3YO filly by Space Blues (@DarleyEurope) was purchased by @CormacFarrell7 & Reppoc Beech Ltd from @lukelillingston

#GoffsGrad

[Cormac Farrell @CormacFarrell7]

Another winner from CF Bloodstock. Bought @Goffs1866 from @lukelillingston and sold after breezing nicely at the Craven 25’ @Tattersalls1766 to @AvenueBstock . She wins well in Goodwood . Big congrats to all connections .

[Luke Lillingston @lukelillingston]

🥇SILCA BAY🥇

Mount Coote Stud double @Goodwood_Races as Silca Bay storms through to score for @johnsonhoughton for the fourth time!

The 4YO gelding was bred by
MOUNT COOTE STUD and Fiona Marner Bloodstock.

[The Majority #ScrapHolyrood @themajorityscot]

Has the Scottish Parliament failed? Repost for the widest possible participation

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

A tenant farmer in the Cairngorms says land that sold for £500 an acre a few years ago now goes for £5,000. He is being moved off ground his family has worked for generations, because he cannot outbid the people buying it. The buyers are corporations, and they have no intention of farming a single acre of it.

Here is how the trick works. A company keeps emitting carbon exactly as before. Same factories, same flights, same supply chain, same product. Then it buys a Scottish hillside, plants some trees, and announces to the world that it is now carbon neutral, or, if it is feeling brave, carbon negative. The emissions never fell. It simply bought a landscape to point at.

Take BrewDog. In 2020 it bought a 9,300-acre Highland estate, propped up with public grant money, and promised a million trees and the crown of the world's first carbon negative beer business, removing twice the carbon it emitted, forever. By 2023 roughly half of the 500,000 trees it had managed to plant were dead, killed by drought, with critics noting the planting was drying out the peat and releasing carbon of its own. The advertising regulator ruled its carbon-negative claims misleading. In 2024 it quietly dropped the badge and dismissed the entire carbon credit market as a flood of cheap schemes whose benefit was "questionable, maybe even non-existent." Then it sold the estate to a firm whose actual business is selling carbon offsets.

That is the whole model in one story. Public money in. Dead trees out. A green halo worn for four years and then dropped. The farmer who used to be on that land, gone. The hillside passed to a company that exists purely to sell other people the right to keep polluting.

This is no fringe case. In one recent year, half of every estate sold in Scotland went to investment funds, corporations and charitable trusts rather than anyone who would farm it. A third of the deals for plantable land are now done off-market, in secret, precisely so the local community never gets the chance to bid.

So this is what net zero looks like on the ground. A man who produced food is priced out of his own glen. A corporation that produced emissions buys the glen, calls itself a force for good, and sells the carbon. The land stops feeding anyone. Nobody's emissions actually went down by a gram.

The food was real. The farmer was real. The carbon saving is a line in a slide deck.

And we have somehow decided the villain in all this is the man with the sheep.

[tabs lillingston @tlillingston]

@SamaHoole @dredvers Tragic and so corrupt

[tabs lillingston @tlillingston]

Save Christmas Cards - Urge Royal Mail to introduce a 50p seasonal Christmas stamp - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/6t48lpIICL via @Change

[ClarksonsFarm @ClarksonsFarm1]

Repost!🙌🏼

[Luke Lillingston @lukelillingston]

🥇LOUGH LEANE🥇

7 wins and a first for new connections for Lough Leane who came home first in the feature contest @BallinrobeRaces

The son of Cityscape was bred by
MOUNT COOTE STUD!

[Luke Lillingston @lukelillingston]

🥇ANYWAYTHEWINDBLOWS🥇

It’s a first STATESIDE victory for Anywaythewindblows who completely outclasses them @santaanitapark

The daughter of Zoustar was bought by @lillingston_bs from @Tweenhills @Tattersalls1766 December Foal Sale and produced
by MOUNT COOTE STUD!

[Tattersalls @Tattersalls1766]

Smart debut from Night In Vegas for the @johnsonhoughton, @bishopcharlie12 & @KennetValleySyn team, bought alongside @lillingston_bs for 60,000gns from Mountarmstrong Stud at #TattsOctober Book 3.

[Smyly Media @SmylyMedia]

Well done team @KennetValleySyn, @johnsonhoughton & @bishopcharlie12 - a very taking debut! Shrewd purchase @lukelillingston!

[At The Races @AtTheRaces]

Lovely turn of foot!

Night In Vegas mows down Victory Gold on the run for home to make it a winning debut in our @Ascot opener...

@johnsonhoughton | @bishopcharlie12

[Luke Lillingston @lukelillingston]

🥇NIGHT IN VEGAS🥇

Purchased by @lillingston_bs from Mountarmstrong Stud @Tattersalls1766 Book 3.

First 2YO runner for @KennetValleySyn of 2026!
Congratulations to all connections!
@johnsonhoughton @bishopcharlie12

[Hot To Trot Racing @HotToTrotRacing]

🇩🇪 𝐒𝐄𝐀 𝐏𝐎𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐘

Our dual winner by Wootton Bassett heads to Hannover today for the Listed Burckhardt Group Grand Prix over 1m2f.

She’s travelled over really well, settled in great order and goes there in top form.

⏰ 2pm (GMT)
📺 Live on Wettstar’s YouTube
Good luck🤞

[Lillingston_Bloodstock @lillingston_bs]

Thank you ⁦@theTDN⁩ for the opportunity to share the Kern Lillingston / Expensive Queen story ⁦@MillerJoe7⁩ 🐎 https://t.co/aQWyAbAOM3

[tabs lillingston @tlillingston]

@SallyMa13559126 @Tumbattle @omeararacing @lukelillingston Brilliant

[James & Jean Potter Ltd @jandjpotterltd]

Numero Ventotto wins in a trot @MarketRasenRace today in fine style under @NdeBoinville for @HotToTrotRacing @HoskinsSam @uptonviva @sevenbarrows.

Clearly a smart filly to follow by @YortonFarm #GENTLEWAVE

https://t.co/2A4KGgrmWZ

[Hot To Trot Racing @HotToTrotRacing]

Want to be part of it? Join one of our Hot To Trot syndicates from £2,450 for the 2026 season - fun, sociable ownership with top trainers, yard visits, racedays and events. Racing is better together.

https://t.co/ym2TX6PEdj