Plans promise much but it's time to see results

I'm not being negative about this. It's fantastic.

It is effectively the blueprint for putting these great towns and city on the path to prosperity, a brighter future and so on and so on.

The problem is it's still not quite a done deal. There is still the matter of the authorities getting the go-ahead to borrow the money for the rail station or raise it another way.

At the end of this month it'll be 10 years since I started training to be a reporter.

And in all that time there has been the plan to rebuild what is, to be frank, an embarrassingly ugly rail station that does nothing to welcome would-be investors to the city of Wolverhampton.

Progress has been made, of course. The bus station's been up for almost four years and the new office and shop block nearby is getting going.

But the rail station itself limps on. New designs have come and gone.

And the more that happens, the more difficult it becomes to generate anything akin to excitement among the people who should be welcoming this with open arms – the travelling public.

There are some very upbeat messages coming out of the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership, which has done well to establish itself in its own right alongside the larger neighbour, the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP (there's a mouthful).

Stewart Towe, the Black Country LEP's chairman, had a wonderful turn of phrase when he introduced cities minister Greg Clark at the growth deal signing ceremony. at the Civic Halls.

He explained how Mr Clark had seen the rail station represented an 'opportunity' for development.

That's a kinder description than the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin once gave when he said it was 'awful'.

It's good we have people like Mr Towe going to bat for us when it comes to campaigning for funding.

He will be far more diplomatic about seeking funding or devolved powers than a lot of people who have kept having to look at artists' impressions rather than seeing cranes on the skyline.

Maybe there will be a pre-election rabbit pulled from the hat when it comes to the rest of the money to get things started.

Now is definitely the right time for vote-seeking parties to start making promises to voters in marginal seats like the Black Country.

But council leaders and others will have to excuse commuters for not holding their breath yet.

U-kip shop? It's not selling beds

UKIP opened an office in Wolverhampton city centre this week.

It means people who want to find out more about the Eurosceptic party know exactly where to find them while those who disagree with their views can take a pair of compasses and drawn their own exclusion zone.

But it does show the effort the self-proclaimed 'people's army' is going to in the run up to the General Election.

And at the very least, it's one less empty shop for a few months.