That so-called Eco village makes me incredibly angry. I own a farm not very far from there and I know how difficult it is the get Planning Permission in the open country, on farm land. You can SOMETIMES get planning to convert an existing stone farm building to a dwelling house, and then the Planners are STRICT in only allowing you, at most, 50 per cent of the ground footprint of the original farm building.
In this Glandwr case, English hippy, college drop-out types bought a small farm VERY CHEAPLY.There is no way that such farm land EVER gets Planning Permission in West Wales. Then they SURREPTITIOUSLY built SEVERAL shanty “sustainable ” “green” dwellings hidden amongst the trees.completely without Planning Permission. No Welsh farmer would have been given Planning. Any works of that kind and he would have been ORDERED to bulldoze the lot immediately. But this lot fought for a few years to save their shanties, using all sorts of “green” , “sustainable” arguments, and in the end…..DISGUSTINGLY….they WON !! They were allowed to keep their homes, even though they had DUPED the council by erecting them ON THE SLY !!
Now, a rural building plot in West Wales was £20,000 before 2000. At peak , in 2007, a rural building plot hit £100,000 , whilst 3rd grade farm land like this , without planning, was less than £3000 an acre , even including an old farm house.. When they bought that farm, I DOUBT if they paid £1000 an acre , including any farm house and yard that was on it.
An acre of land will hold six to eight BIG houses. It will take 12 or 15 [ maybe more] of the small shanty types built at Glandwr. But the greenies have also spread them out over a few acres. To BUY land like that with PROPER PLANNING PERMISSION on it would cost SEVERAL MILLION pounds . So these people HAVE VIRTUALLY STOLEN THAT FARM FROM THE PREVIOUS WELSH OWNERS WHO WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PERMITTED A SINGLE EXTRA DWELLING ON OPEN LAND !! I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAID FOR THAT FARM………A PITTANCE, NO DOUBT !!
As soon as they got their “Planning” and the permission to keep their homes…….I knew that they would soon build bigger, more conventional dwellings on the same ILLEGAL “plots”. This is the case. They tick all the “sustainable” , “green” boxes to get ILLEGAL BUILDING PLOTS where other local West Walians are TURNED DOWN ! Now they are improving what they first built , again using “GREEN” arguments to DUPE the idiot bureaucrats.

I am about 10 miles from these people, and have a LOT of farm land. i would not get planning permission ANYWHERE on that land , except on the farm yard to convert a stone building. I put TWO NEW LOOSE PORTACABINS [ new and not unattractive] , NEXT to a tourism building last year, to provide ESSENTIAL toilets and showers for campers and caravanners on land we have farmed and owned for 132 YEARS. That tourism enterprise is providing WORK for local people and bringing a great deal of spin-off money into the local economy. We spent £60,000 with local firms to fence off and locate those cabins.
The firms selling the portacabins told me that LOOSE[ NOT FIXED TO THE GROUND] relocateable buildings did NOT require Planning Permission. However, the council made us apply for it and pay £365 in Planning fees. Yet there are LOOSE PORTACABINS all over the local mart grounds , in businesses and on farms, all over West Wales
So we had planning problems……and no way could we put any sort of structure in our open fields, away from our yard.
What they have done in Glandwr is to erect PERMANENT DWELLINGS FIXED TO THE GROUND. That needs BUILDING PLOTS……..and they are still £70000 / £80000 plus each , at least. These “greenies” ……WHO DON’T BELIEVE IN CAPITALIST ECONOMIES , SUPPOSEDLY …….have STOLEN BUILDING LAND WORTH AT LEAST A MILLION ON TODAY’S MARKET !! THEY HAVE VIRTUALLY BUILT A PRIVATE VILLAGE ON LAND WHICH INITALLY COST THEM PEANUTS !!
I wager the WHOLE farm cost less than £30000 initially, if there is 30 acres there.

What HYPOCRITES !! These are the “left-wing” NON-CAPITALISTS !!
They tick all the “green” boxes and supply all the WAFFLE going , and that waffling CR*P allows them to BREAK THE LAW AND STEAL WELSH AGRICULTURAL LAND…THEN DEVELOP IT !!

I’d like to hear what the families of the previous Welsh owners have got to say now. They have been ROBBED !!

And imagine, once we were all doing our self sufficient thing, maybe we could find some efficiency savings by, for instance, making some of the small holdings a bit bigger, using some machinery, to free up some people to do something beyond self sufficiency, producing stuff to sell outside the community. How exciting.

We might even find that if we made some of these big small holdings – we could call them holdings, or maybe, farms – really efficient, we could swap some of our produce for foreign produce like bananas or caviar.

There’s just this niggling suspiocion that maybe this might have happened already somewhere…

All joshing aside, though, they are aiming for 80% self-sufficiency. I think that my household is about 140% seld sufficient, in that we produce our own stuff which we sell to the outside world, and use that to buy other stuff that we need, like food. We are so self sufficient that we have enough left over to pay the government the extr over what we need for the benefit of living in this great country of ours, the wonderful UK…

Sorry, I should have said *most* joshing aside…

The most objectionable thing, however, is the assertion that this kind of lifestyle is ‘sustainable’. It’s not. To be ‘sustainable’ in any meaningful way it would have to be a minimal carbon-footprint model of living for all of humanity – or at least the society they’re trying to set an example to, and plainly, there’s not quite enough land available for every nuclear family of ‘greater England’ to go squatting on a few spare muddy acres of West Wales or the like.

Get this, people in Swansea are selling stolen horses for a fiver in order to raise money to buy smack. So we need some do gooders to come in with their £750k of lotto funding to help out the horses and the smack heads.

And if you look at their facebook page. You will see that they are buddies with the Labourites of Swansea.

But unfortunately £750k is not enough to provide a bi lingual website.
http://www.cyrenians.co.uk/hafan.shtml

Their Cymraeg site is full of the lorum ipsum place holder text. Perhaps they need more money?

Here is a perfect current example of what you’re talking about Jac. http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/10175768.Eco_village_film_hits_cinemas/?ref=mr

Built without planning permission. Had they been Welsh they would have been punished. Being English, and middle class, they are rewarded.

Tan 6, the Welsh Management’s Hippy Charter. Another example of helping everybody except those who belong in this country. Quisling Labour.

Stylish and poignant, it would make a great musical. Find yourself a decent composer, get some tips from Lucy Prebble and put on a show: Colonisation – the musical! At least we’ll go down singing and laughing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/8424189.stm

“Eco-village awarded £350k grant”