signore bio-edilizia came today, and stayed for lunch.

he explained that italy is so behind on its commitments to renewables, that it's up for a hefty fine in 2010 unless things shift rapidos.

he was the wired type, zinging on several espressos, i'd guess, which always has a reverse effect on me...first i try to get a word or two in edgeways, it's supposed to be a dialogue, i thought, then i gave up and let him gush, while i tried to figure him out.

basically he's the 'fixer', it appears, taking cuts for putting the links together, and engineering the overview.

as usual, in italia, things look very positive, at first, but time has a way of revealing flaws in the reasoning, skipped over in the high adrenalin.

'now', he said, 'is the time in italy to get rich on solar.'

'incentivi' up the yin-yang, 'finanziamenti' a gogo, please tell as many people as possible...

so i told the guy in the tile shop i bumped into later on, who's building a warehouse and was just about to order a roof, slipped him the cell number, and felt like this is the new tupperware...

i don't know whether to laugh or cry.

basically over 20 years, with some land turned over to install 20 kw -using the bank's money- i will be paid €500,000.

all this with no electric bills whatsoever...

i said 'what's to stop people going crazy using electricity to heat every room, their water, leave the lights on all night etc?'

he gave me a twinkly look, and said: 'that's the idea!'

yup, same reaction here...it's gotta be a crock, right?

tune in to the next thrilling episode, sometime soon at a blog near you.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty