Hi Ian.
I understand your position on Google, the Panda update and their quality guidelines. There is so much I can say in response but the bottom line: Google is a private for-profit company. They offer to send organic search traffic to your site at no charge but require you meet certain guidelines they set forth. If you do not wish to participate, you can easily opt-out via the robots.txt file and other means. The reality is, businesses depend on Google so you and I along with everyone else need to understand their rules and work with them to maximize the exposure of our sites.
Regarding item #1, the URLs, it is normally not a large ranking factor, but it is a ranking factor and in a competitive industry I strongly advise you to do everything possible to improve your rankings. A change in your case might make a larger difference then most sites as there are so many non-standard corrections to be made. Additionally, URL appearance can affect click-through-rates.
Regarding item #2, including a page's target keywords in content, I checked multiple pages of your site and noticed this issue. The David Carr link I mentioned above was one example but all the similar pages I check had this issue. The only inclusion of the phrase was in a standard "For a review of the David Carr.....click here". This phrase was not in the original paragraph, it was separated from the rest of the content, and it seemed very "canned".
Regarding item #3, here is a link from the #1 ranked site to one of their pages which is equivalent to the David Carr link from your site: http://www.holidaycottages.co.uk/devon/north-devon/gracious-ford-cottage. This page represents the type of page Google believes searches would like to see. Please specifically notice the page contains what appears to be rich, custom and unique content specifically related to this listing. Also note the clean URL and multiple pictures. This site ranks #1 for the term "holiday lets in Devon".
This particular page targets the term "gracious ford cottage" and ranks #1 for that term. Of course, there is zero competition for that exact phrase, but it also ranks #10 for the term "ford cottage". There are improvements which can be made to the page. For example, this page also fails to use the term "ford cottage" within it's content. If it did, it would likely rank even higher.
The final point you shared is about showing your search result page in Google. Generally speaking, Google prefers not to show "search results within search results". I also noted a few oddities during my brief visit of your site. The same page changes upon refresh. Using the Beer, Devon example I loaded the page on two separate pc's. I tried to find the same David Carr result from pc #1 on pc #2 and was unable to do such. There were about 50 results and I scanned them multiple times and it was not there. The order and selection of cottages seems to change each time. I can't say this would affect rankings other then it did not create a user-friendly experience for myself.
I recognize your viewpoint. You feel you are presenting your site in the best manner possible for your users, and you do not wish to change your presentation to satisfy a search engine. Well, you don't have to...unless you desire to be ranked higher by that search engine. You can leave your site as-is and pay Google for AdWords and generate your traffic in that manner. Otherwise, your site presentation will need to radically change if you wish to find it's pages listed higher in search results.
Good luck.