I have/want the structure:
News
NewsPage | AnotherNewsPage | NewsCategory1 | NewsCategory2
NewsPost1 etc
Permalinks should be /news/newspage (works), /news/newscategory1 (doesn't work / permalink collision), news/newscategory1/newspost1 etc/
I currently have it so that News is a standard page as opposed to the Posts Page.
If this possible? Or do I have to accept that the permalinks for posts will always be different from the page permalinks / not mix pages and posts?
The permalink of the post will always be different - unless you start using custom post types and taxonomies.
You can change the root of the category path in the permalink settings - this will change the path for all posts though.
You could also start messing with rewrite rules but this could break everything else.