You appear to have taken my remark as hostile, Teribus. Honestly it wasn't.

Actually there is rhetorical logic to using the longer time frame. There's probably a Greek term for t, there generally is. It serves to emphasise that the 43 years is not a period during which referendums were infrequent, but rather the reverse,

Local referendums about local issues are more readily justified.

The only countries where referendums on national issues are relatively common are Switzerland, where there have been over 600 since the mid 19th century (many on a canton level), and Ireland since the 1940s. These seem to work out well enough, with populations which have become accustomed to them. The English seem to panic at anything unfamiliar - hence the nonsense that was talked about how complicated Alternative Voting would have been.