Yesterday we learnt more about George Louis Taylor, the Peak District based Data Surveillance professional who has been filmed on camera vandalising gamekeeper’s property and harassing and intimidating young gamekeepers.
But Mr Taylor has an accomplice, Mike Price. We don’t know as much about Mike Price other than he is seemingly an unemployed raptor worker from Stockport and a close acquaintance of George Taylor.
It should be mentioned that many within the Peak District Raptor Group are very popular with both Peak District national park officials and gamekeepers alike and they work well in collaboration with the gamekeeping community.
Run by the affable and pragmatic raptor expert, Steve Davis, huge efforts have been made on both sides to develop a strong working working relationship which benefits all, not least the rapidly growing number of raptors across the Peak District and the rest of the country. There are now well over 250k birds of prey across the UK.
However the Peak District Raptor Group is being severely let down by the ongoing activist extremism, harassment and lies being pushed by George Taylor and Mike Price. Although there is no doubting that George Taylor has been the main instigator in this, Mike Price has been known to be a worthy accomplice.
This was shown most clearly during the lockdown period in late March 2020 when all but absolute essential travel was permitted.
Not one to generally follow the law, George Taylor decided he would flout the lockdown restrictions by claiming his company, Caudata Group, had ‘Authorisation to Work’ to carry out ‘Critical Telecommunications Infrastructure.’
Whether George Taylor did have this critical work to carry out we are unsure, however what is most extraordinary about this letter is that Mr Taylor also says: ‘The following staff are duly authorised to work under the Coronavirus Act’ as part of this ‘Critical Telecommunications Infrastructure’.
The staff listed include:
· George Taylor
· Mike Price
· Alistair Spencer
· Dan Osbaldeston
Strangely none of these workers are listed as staff or directors on Caudata Group website or official records of the company. Indeed, Mike Price is known to be a long term unemployed individual, with his LinkedIn showing he doesn’t seem to have worked since leaving Hadfield School in 1990.
Instead it looks rather like what is going on here is that George Taylor was trying to pass off Mike Price (and two others) as telecom Engineers in order to circumvent the strict coronavirus law.
Based on video evidence around this date, it would also seem that rather than carrying out any engineering they were instead carrying out a campaign of harassment and vandalism against gamekeepers.
Certainly the best thing the Peak District Raptor Group could do, indeed any other reputable Peak District Wildlife Groups, would be to distance themselves as far as possible from these two firebrand vandals.