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Cardiff Bay Yacht Club has never seen a launch like this one. The UK Independence Party chose the venue to promote its election manifesto to a crowd of journalists and (almost exclusively male) party activists.

The star turn was the party leader, Lord Pearson, who used self-deprecating charm to deflect detailed questions about Wales.

"Here's someone who knows what they're talking about," was a line deployed on a couple of occasions, having discovered that St David's Day is not a bank holiday in Wales.

The UKIP manifesto promises a public holiday on St George's Day in England, but omits all references to Wales's patron sent.

"A mistake," explained UKIP Euro-MP John Bufton; a mistake that has apparently been corrected in the online version.

The manifesto also promises to scrap the Barnett formula, which decides more than half of public spending in Wales, on the grounds that it's too generous to England. So would Wales, where public spending is higher per head, lose out under the change?

Lord Pearson lives in Scotland, where public spending is higher still, and suggested Mr Bufton would know what he is talking about. The answer lies in withdrawal from Europe, apparently.

UKIP say they would abolish the Welsh assembly, replacing 60 AMs with 40 Welsh MPs who would sit in Cardiff Bay one week in four - while Westminster became an English parliament for the week.

The party is standing in all 40 Welsh seats and there is no doubting the commitment of their activists. One wore a corduroy purple suit that colour-matched his socks and party rosette.

Lord Pearson, who was given his peerage by Margaret Thatcher, was upbeat about his party's prospects, even if, as a peer, he won't be able to vote UKIP himself.

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