Don't shoot the messenger, Mr Frost

SPECIAL REPORT 

The serious allegations levelled at this Not Just Sheep & Rugby blogging website by Martin Frost, chairman of the Avocet Group of companies are totally false and without foundation readers should know.

In the latest letter to 650 shareholders of his 'disruptive technology' businesses Mr Frost claims:"Noteworthy, as Chisholm and Aileen Orr fail to inform – anyone who visits their web blogs is electronically tagged & harvested - enabling Chisholm and third parties to track & back track their visits, exchanges & intromissions – an obvious invasion of privacy!"

We will deal with that particular slur later on in this article.

But before that Avocet investors should know the blog run by retired journalist Bill Chisholm M.B.E. is entirely independent and has no link to any Avocet shareholder. However, Not Just Sheep & Rugby believes the issues currently being faced by some Avocet companies are of considerable public interest and we will continue to write about those issues without fear or favour.

The collapse into insolvency of Orrdone Farms PLC (previously known as Avocet Farms Ltd) and the ongoing liquidation of the Group's former flagship parent Omega Infinite (it used to be called Avocet Infinite Ltd) has major implications for the Scottish Borders.

For example, the first report from the administrators of Orrdone Farms included a list of creditors owed more than £600,000, among them local businesses operating on both sides of the national boundary as well as HMRC and the Government agency Scottish Forestry & Land. There is also the small matter of the £3.2 million which, according to the joint administrators, is being sought by an agricultural finance company.

And the last annual meeting of shareholders of Omega Infinite held in October 2019 heard that creditors of that business were due a total of £800,000 at that time.

There is also ample evidence that a significant number of Avocet shareholders are concerned at the lack of progress in bringing products to market some six years after the first company's formation.

Not Just Sheep & Rugby would also like to take this opportunity to make it clear that Mr Frost's description of Mr Chisholm as "an acolyte" of Mrs Aileen Orr is pure fantasy: Mr Chisholm has never met Mrs Orr or any other members of her family who appear to be regular targets for the Avocet chairman's wrath.

Anyone who has read Mr Frost's correspondence with his shareholders will know that he frequently threatens legal action against all and sundry. The police must also be kept busy looking into Avocet's scores of complaints of alleged 'criminal behaviour' in Berwickshire alone.

The current shareholders' letter - written on company-headed notepaper - declares: "The enclosed correspondence has little to do with Avocet’s business prospects, but it will help provide an explanation as to why some things happened in 2019 as they did. Remember, that the police have agreed to review over 100 complaints made by Avocet in 2018 and 2019 against the Sunwick Orr family and their acolytes."

And among other serious allegations contained in the letter is the following statement: "the Orr family has little intention to repay the Hamilton Orr Limited £3.9 million debt due to UK Agricultural Lending Limited or make good the £10 million or so that the Orr family appears to have defrauded from Avocet shareholders." 

Mr Frost frequently states in these missives that Avocet as a company or he personally has 'taken legal advice' or is about to 'place the matter in the hands of our lawyers'. Well in turning to the very grave allegation he has chosen to level at us we have taken advice from a technical expert who commented:

"As can be seen from entering the blog's web page it states: 'This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyse traffic. Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google, together with performance and security metrics, to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics and to detect and address abuse.'

"Bill Chisholm cannot access this information, and it is not being used maliciously. In fact, Google’s own advice page states that this information can be used in several ways including being applied to 'protect your data'. Both data harvesting and electronic tagging are unrelated concepts to this and are not being employed either." 

Our source added: "To suggest an invasion of privacy is utter bullshit!"

NOTE: For the benefit of those who do not know him Bill Chisholm was The Scotsman newspaper's district reporter for the Scottish Borders from 1969 to 2005. He was invested with the MBE by Her Majesty the Queen for services to journalism in 2006.