A few months ago the local electricity company in London sent a guy to change the old meter at my uncles house , he came in with his steps and tool bag to do the job and looked at the meter and said , sorry it looks too high for me to do it of the stepladder i will have to come back with someone to help me ( The meter is 2.7 meters from the floor , i measured it ) so away he went , 3 days later 3 guys turn up and spend 30 minutes erecting a small scaffolding tower and a fixed ladder on the side to climb up , meanwhile my uncle was standing there watching all this unfold with utter amusement and said to one of the guys , is this a joke being played out for one of them tv shows , no said the guy this has to be done because they are not allowed to climb up a ladder more than 1 meter...! , anyway the other guy climbed up the ladder and got onto the platform and then fixed ( A safety harness ) onto the top of the tower and clipped it onto his belt , he then changed the meter which took 2 minutes to do and then unclipped his harness and came back down , the 3 guys then took down the scaffold which took another 20 minutes and loaded it into their van and off they went .
I think this health and safety shit is going crazy , in the UK these utility companies are frightened shitless about someone hurting themselves and suing the company so they go way above the standard practice to stop this happening , and that way if someone does have an accident and gets injured , they don't give a fuck because they have covered themselves legally .........