The recent railway funding announcement from Westminster looked, at first glance, to be really good news. It looked like Wales might get billions of pounds of investment in our tracks and trains - until you read the small print. This "announcement" heralded no new money to any projects we hadn't already heard about.

Any extra commitments were simply signals of support for an idea - with no guarantee or backing to go with them.To add insult to injury, the UK Government was using this supposed "announcement" as a reason not to devolve further powers over railway lines to Wales.

"We have half a notion to perhaps put some undisclosed amount of money into in-no-way-guaranteed projects in the future" - that was their half-baked promise, "so, there is no need for you to worry about doing this yourselves". Some commitment!

Professor Mark Barry, a railways expert, was quoted as saying he could not understand why Westminster would attempt to separate the two issues of funding and powers: both were historic wrongs that needed to be corrected. But the Westminster government had spotted a way of creating a headline to take heat away from the injustice. Cynical politics of the most brazen sort.We know that Wales is owed billions of pounds from projects that have been classified as "England and Wales" railway projects.

Projects like HS2, and the Oxford-Cambridge line, that demonstrably only benefit England and only exist in England. And yet, because of some trick in the Treasury, we lose out on billions from these projects, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland get consequential funding from them. It is a ridiculously blatant injustice - and both Labour and the Tories in the Senedd agree on this point. UK Labour used to agree, too, until they were in power and in a position to do something about it. It's the latest example of how badly Wales is let down by Westminster. We will never be a priority for them.

So as much as I welcome the idea of investment in railway projects, this is not new investment: indeed, it is no more than an idea. And pretending that support for that idea of more equates to actual extra money is an insult to intelligence. Wales is owed far, far more than what we've been given here, and the powers that be know that only too well. Our progress has been held up for far too long: it's high time Wales set the direction of travel for ourselves.