Goa is very popular with the ‘Alternatives’. Though seeing as this post is about planning it’s also worth remembering how whole ‘eco-villages’ can be built in a national park, without planning permission and then, when discovered, result in nothing more than an indulgent smile and retrospective planning consent. And of course, support from senior figures in Plaid Cymru. Whereas if a local had pulled a stunt like that he would have been dragged through the courts and bankrupted. The language that really gets you places in modern Wales is not English as we have known it but post-hippy Estuary English.

I agree that in many cases the ‘eco-hippy’ settlers in rural Wales are transient, but what I could never understand is how a man in a caravan claiming jobseekers allowance while building an eco-home can suddenly find the wonga for solar panels, underfloor heating and triple glazing. There is a savings limit on claiming such benefits. I am also amazed to discover the simplicity of erecting Yurts while suffering from bad backs, and the astonishing sunshine to be had by environmentally friendly badger campaigners in Crymych during February providing a tan usually only gained from two weeks in Goa. That may be a similar MO as the lady, originally from Frome in Somerset, who’s parents had settled in darkest Powys where she was supposedly living, while claiming benefits at multiple false addresses in Brighton, West Sussex.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-26858062
The DWP have specific counter-fraud operations which they boast success including one within the rural communities of the Fens and Norfolk where claimants were actually running gang-master operations exploiting Poles on arable farms, and another in the Nigerian community in West London where claimants were running a fraudulent identity scams claiming benefits for “unemployed” people in buy-to-let properties acquired for the purposes of enrichment. Why don’t doesn’t the DWP now set up a team in Wales to tackle the ‘eco-hippy’ brigade some of whom evidently have means way beyond their professed need for state benefits?

The shared legal system is irrelevant in this context. Laws specifically for Wales (supposedly) do not have to mention England, and certainly not 39 times. But if you’re tired, off you go, up the wooden hill to blanket bay – and don’t forget Teddy!

I would have thought that planning inspectors are recruited through the usual process of job vacancy adverts.

I’m bored and sleepy going through the rest of your post so I’ve given up.

What I have come to understand in the thirty-odd years I’ve lived in the countryside is that the English element in the population is ever-changing. In the small village where I live people have moved in and moved out, or died, before I came to know them. So we are dealing with a very fluid population.

As for Ceredigion, much of the 40% you quote is attached to the two universities at Aberystwyth and Lampeter. Then there are the retirees, the hippies, and the lifestyle refugees (including white flighters). So while the numbers may remain constant or rise, the individuals making up the overall figure will be forever changing. This is not Northern Ireland, or some other area with two established populations made up of individuals having deep roots in the region. In Wales, only one group has the roots.

You say you can’t see Ceredigion’s 40% upping and moving. Many will leave Wales when they finish university. Others will die. As for the remainder, well, they moved from somewhere else to Ceredigion so there’s a good chance they’ll move on again. Not least because many of them are middle class transients, unable to put down roots. In five years time they could be in Cornwall, Spain, or Florida.

As for those who stay, many will be assimilated.

Perhaps I’m not as pessimistic as you, for I don’t believe the damage is irreversible – if the colonisation is stopped soon. Many of those who have moved in are elderly, without kids, they will just die off. Others have moved to places like Rhyl for no good reason, they could be encouraged to move back whence they came, there’s nothing holding them here. What remains can be assimilated as it was in the south.

The answer lies in what the Planning Inspectorate said about Denbighshire needing to attract a younger population from outside the county because it had an ageing population. But why does it have an ageing population? Because of the influx of elderly English people. Curb that and there’d be no need to attract younger English immigrants to balance things out.