Building new houses, of itself, need not be a bad thing, but of course WE don’t need 320,000. Not least because in the rural areas there is an oversupply of housing. By which I mean, more than enough to cater for local demand for 30 years or more.

I say that building new houses need not be bad because in the village where I live (Snowdonia National Park) no new houses have been built for years, council houses have been bought, yet the external demand has grown, which results in rising prices that effectively excludes most locals. Result: the village is reaching the tipping point when it will soon be majority English. So the real problem is the external demand for housing in Wales, and how to deal with it.

There is no doubt that Wales has suffered because of policies pursued to make England multicultural or multiracial. There has definitely been an element of White Flight. No one wil admit it publicly, and neither politicians nor media will discuss it. But even if the UK does curb immigration it won’t stop the decay of many English cities. Which results in those who can afford to ‘escaping’ to Wales, and many of those who can’t afford to, being dumped here.

I’m sure it could be done by basing a projection on the figures from the censuses of 1991, 2001 and 2011. But of course in 2001 we weren’t allowed to describe ourselves as Welsh. But it should still give country of birth. Will give it some thought.

UPDATE: Have e-mailed ONS for info, but I can tell you now that the percentage of Welsh born in the population dropped from 75.4% to 72.7% between 2001 and 2011. A drop of 2.7% in a decade might suggest that we Welsh will remain a majority in our own country for another 80 years.

But of course that doesn’t take into account those born in Wales – especially to English parents – who regard themselves as ‘British’, ‘English’, or ‘English and British’. This why only 57.5% of the population in 2011 identified as ‘Welsh only’. (And a further 7.1% as ‘Welsh and British’.) So the ‘Welsh Only’ element of the population could be in a minority by the next census.

There’s still a large number of unambiguously Welsh people living in the Valleys, Swansea Bay and eastern Carmarthenshire but we’re totally seperated from our brothers in Gwynedd by the ‘Greater Mercia’ that has formed in Ceredigion & Powys!

The figure I’ve highlighted might be acceptable, even encouraging, if it could be viewed against the backdrop of an overwhelmingly Welsh Wales. But when we consider this figure in the context of a Wales in which the Welsh are an ever reducing percentage of the population then it offers no comfort.

Even if you’re right about the percentage having possibly been higher in 1979, bear in mind that the percentage of the Welsh in the population would have been a hell of a lot higher too.

Very true, and made worse by a Welsh Government that subsidises Welsh students in England while encouraging ‘Welsh’ universities to become degree factories where size matters more than anything else. Though there is a great difference between Wales today and Dev’s Ireland. Ireland had a very high birthrate to help maintain population levels, and did not suffer waves of English retirees in Sligo, goodlifers taking over Galway, or riff-raff from English cities being dumped in Mayo.

certainly i cant help but feel that lthe figure for those welsh people who appear to reject any form of welsh identity might have been greater in 1979 (when the welsh virtually voted themselves out of existence) than in the 2011 census……similarly i suspect that the numbers who would have described themselves as welsh rather than british would have been far lower in 1979 than in the 2011 census….. so perhaps you neednt be quite so worried as you appear to be about this matter….