*"Buttered - I was just going to say that I thought you'd got that arse about tit, as they say!
It's also telling that Helpful thinks that voting with your heart is better than making a reasoned case for your vote. It's rather sad really..."*
Actually I'm a bit conflicted on this. I don't think I would agree that voting with your heart rather than with your head is definitely wrong, as long as people understand that that is what they are doing.
If somebody said to me, "I want to leave the EU because I believe we should be able to control our borders and have full sovereignty over our own laws, and I understand that leaving could cause us economic hardship but I think that's a fair price to pay," then I would totally respect that point of view. Those are fine principles to have, and ultimately it is a question of how much you personally are prepared to pay, or risk paying, for the sake of those principles.
The problem is that a large number of Brexit voters believe that leaving the EU is a no brainer - that we will have full control over our borders AND full sovereignty over our own laws AND that we will definitely be better off financially because our economy will be stronger out of the EU. They think they're voting with their heads as well as their hearts, which is why it is such an easy decision. In reality, it isn't that simple.
It's easy to say, from the relative comfort of our current situation, "I think we'll be better off economically if we leave the EU and go it alone." But people who are saying that now won't be able to keep saying, "We're economically better off outside the EU" in future years if reality is that we are worse off.
It's also easy to say, "I think a weaker economy is a fair price to pay for immigration controls and sovereignty" at the moment, when it's a hypothetical situation. But if, in five years' time, we have high unemployment and people are struggling to make ends meet because the contents of their shopping trolley cost a lot more than they used to and they can't afford to replace their car, will people still feel the same way?
If I genuinely believed that people were fully informed of all the issues, and that people understood the potential economic impact of Brexit and still thought it was a risk worth taking, then I would respect that and think, "fine, well if the leave vote wins, we'll just have to deal with that as best we can."
But I really don't think most people understand the issues, and that is what worries me.