Transport has tended to be, in Wales, something that's done to us, not for us and certainly not for ourselves. Our transport infrastructure has often reflected the prevailing power dynamics, the prevailing economics, rather than being used in the way that I think Lee Waters was suggesting and, indeed, Jenny Rathbone—as a creative tool, if you like, for reinventing our country and our economic and social landscape. What I mean, more explicitly: if you look at the transport map of Wales, it essentially has all the hallmarks of a colonised economy. Essentially, it's still basically arterial routes that were either mine to coast or farm to major market. And we're still struggling with that. That's the essence of the problem that we face as a nation: that we are dislocated. To get from the south to Aberystwyth by train, or even more so to north Wales, requires a heroic effort worthy of Odysseus. At a smaller scale, at the micro level, try traversing valleys in the former coalfield area—whether in the west, the centre or in the east—there is no connection. So, how can we create better jobs closer to home when you simply can't get there? You can't even get to a job that may be eight or nine miles away because it's over the next valley.

My fear is that while there is much that is good in the motion, it's interesting what it omits. It refers to the key areas that the Welsh Government are looking at, which are metros: metros for three metropolitan regions. And I find that strange in a country that actually is defined by the fact that most of us don't live in cities. We're a less metropolitan nation than almost any other. The 700,000 people that live in the former coalfield, if they were a city, they'd be a big one, but those are post-industrial villages. I wonder whether in our transport policy we've been somewhat seduced by the snake oil of city regionalism, which has become—. You know, the theory of agglomeration economies: 'If we could double the size of Cardiff, then everything would be fine' is the basic underlying idea of city regionalism. I know, because I've studied under some of the authors of the idea of city regions. Read the book Triumph of the City et cetera. This is absolutely the wrong idea and, in fact, city regionalism around the world now—I think critics and sceptics are coming to the fore, because it hasn't actually delivered what it says it can. [Interruption.] I give way.