maybe he was afraid of heights....

or part of an OSHA class on the proper use of step ladders...
I mean, face it - he didn't have a harness, he didn't have rope to tie off and secure the ladder, he didn't have the proper barriers to keep pedestrians from walking under the ladder. If OSHA caught him using the ladder without the proper safety equipment, they could have shut down the whole facility and fined them $100,000.

Human Jacob's ladder.

It's weird, I can go up to the observation deck of the CN tower, stand at the edge of a cliff or building without any issue, but I feel nervous as shit hanging Christmas lights using an aluminum extension ladder (which never seem stable). lol. I guess as long as whatever I'm standing on is secure and stable, I'm good.

With that said, no way in hell would you get me doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40F8mALRukA

I want a video of some dudes painting that ladder cage, which, incidentally, ought to count for safety apparatus (one saved my ass once).

Not sure if they have it set up like they do elsewhere and the way other companies do it (like Time Warner/Spectrum did here in Austin), but most of these workers will likely be contractors and the only relation to Comcast they will have is the name on the trucks.

The modus operandi was, and maybe still is, issue an apology, fire the specific contractor, and hire another. When these people go to sue Comcast, their lawyers will tell them that the people were not directly employed by Comcast and therefore are culpable separately. Then you get into the whole hassle of trying to track down the contractor, who usually disappears and reappears under a different name.

I remember getting pissed at Time Warner (pre-sellout) because one of their people trespassed on my property and left my gates open. Fortunately my dogs didn't leave, but they could have. He had right of way to cross one gate because their pole is considered part of the 'easement' to the utility company's equipment. The second gate was padlocked and he cut it off because he didn't have a proper ladder to reach the pole, I assume. I called them and they first tried to BS me that the easement covered both gates, but I told them I had the surveyors confirm it didn't when I redid the fence the year before. Then they said that they weren't the direct employer and the guy was a contractor. I asked for info and they gave me his company name only after I complained to a supervisor. His company had a web page, but none of the numbers worked and the 'business address' is basically a knife sharpening shop in central Austin. Time Warner apologized when I called back, but the most they could do was give me a couple of free months service.

Hey there my friend, Congrats on the long struggle up this ladder, you deserve it. Thanks for all the help and encouragement since I have returned, both loki999 and I appreciate that you are here Can't wait for your song!

My general point was that it doesn't matter if they are better off. For example, the degree to which they are better off might not be significant to them and their life. Or they might know even know they would be better off because their life doesn't include unbiased news sources. Or they see the leaked emails as proof that whilst she SAYS things that benefit you, once you vote for her she will do what she likes. Or whatever other worries people might have - only they know and no one in the political sphere seems to care.

The less you have, the less you have to lose, the less involved you are with the system, coupled with access to education and all the rest (especially in America). You are convinced they'd be better off, but they are not and therein lies the problem. Things like the email leak make it a lot harder to convince them of your point of view.

If your house has rot and every time you ask to have it fixed, your landlady holds it together with spit and tape, eventually you've got a shit house that isn't any better than living outside and putting a match to the whole thing is the only way it's going to be rebuilt.

It depends on your perspective on whether the house is already fucked or not, doesn't it? You might live in one of the nice rooms, but someone else further down the ladder is basically living outside.

You only have to look at the way inequality has risen over the past few decades to see how desperate some people are. You can see how someone sleeping in their car, going to a foodbank and coping with mental illness might not see much urgency in choosing between Trump or Hillary.

But maybe the stakes aren't as high for everyone else. The kind of people who would benefit most from Bernie might see the only solution is to vote in protest, maybe hope to push things to the point where fundamental change is the only option.

Equally, those guys might say you are crazy for voting for compromise election after election until things are so bad and homogenised between the parties that you may as well not have voted. In fact, I strongly believe that's what led to the rise of people like Sanders and Trump in the first instance - the complete failure of politicians to fairly represent the views of the people in the country.

I mean, depending on your position on the socioeconomic ladder, it's either hugely important to keep Trump out or just another meaningless exchange of faces. And then you find out that there's an inward corruption, the establishment machine shifts and rules you out again.

You don't have to convince me btw, I'm just saying those people do exist and if you take a close look you can kind of see their point. If someone proves themselves to be untrustworthy, you're on shaky ground by saying that they're the devil you know. If you don't know the devil you know, what are they?

For me, in my country, my patience for compromise is gone. Where would you draw the line in the sand on compromise and manipulation? The next candidate? Or the one after that? Isn't it always really important? Do we compromise forever and let global warming, nuclear war or terrorists from countries we destabilised wipe us out?

I'd go hide that ladder, then...when he comes back for crack next time, he'll have to figure out how to use the scissor lift. Bet that will be a hoot to watch!

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

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"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Yes, it's a mistranslation of la échelle which can mean either ladder or scale (sur une grande échelle means "on a large scale"). Care to guess which meaning Google puts up first if you ask it?

Not bad...but where's the "scale"? Is that how you say 'ladder' in French?

I wonder how this would translate as a tattoo.