I don't shop at Waitrose much. That's not because I resent paying six pounds for a loaf of bread, or because I get antsy whenever I see anyone simultaneously wearing Uggs and buying halloumi – although I do; I'm only human – but because of the little green charity tokens they give you at the checkout.

You're supposed to put these tokens in one of three boxes, each representing an individual cause. Conservatively, I must have spent a third of my life slumped in front of these boxes, agonising over which cause to pick. Should I give it to the dilapidated care home or the local postnatal unit? There's one here collecting money for beehives. Who do I like more, babies or old people? I certainly won't give my token to the beekeepers. But what about the documentary I saw that said we'll all die if the bees go extinct? Perhaps my token would do more good there. Yeah. That's what I'll do. Screw you, premature babies. God, did I really just think, "Screw you, premature babies"? I'm an awful person.

On and on and on it goes. Eventually, withered and hungry, I'll give up. I'll press the token into a stranger's hand. "You look like a kindly fellow," I'll croak. "I trust you to make the right decision." Basically, this is why I do all my shopping at the 24-hour garage around the corner now. I can survive on pasties and biscuits. I can.

It's also, broadly speaking, my attitude towards voting. Call me naive, but it seems sensible to assume that an MP would be better at making important decisions than me. They have access to experts. They have a longer-term view than I do. It's their job. My job is making the same joke about Louis Walsh 15 times a year. Put me in a position of power and I'd wreck everything by teatime. I'd rather pick someone to make decisions on my behalf than make them all myself.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking this, which is why Nigel Farage's newfound love affair with referendums is doomed to failure. This week, Farage declared that a Ukip government would hold regular public referendums for everything from foreign affairs to housing schemes. Direct democracy, he calls it. A massive pain, I call it.

Farage has envisioned a bold new future. A future where the British public gets a say in every single policy that the government proposes. Should the sale of cigarettes be banned for anyone born after the year 2000? You decide! Should the military stage another intervention in Iraq? You decide (terms and conditions apply, please do not vote after lines close as your vote won't be counted but you may still be charged)!

Again and again, whenever there's something to be decided, we'll all march down to the local primary school, put a cross in a box and march home again, safe in the knowledge that we've fulfilled our civic duties. It's a genius idea if you're a politician – by delegating policy to the public, you're effectively freeing up more time to embark on embarrassing campaign photocalls in pubs you'd otherwise never be seen dead in – but it's flawed. Because, really, I don't want that much of a say. Nobody does.

That's what elections are for. An election is a genius act of delegation. I don't want to spend the next five years embarking on an in-depth series of work and pension spending reviews. That's why I went to the trouble of picking a representative to do it for me. And, even then, figuring out which one I should trust turned out to be the most insane faff.

And I'm one of the few who actually bothered to vote. Only 65% of us voted in the general election in 2010. Just over half that number could be arsed to have a say in the European elections. If people can't be convinced to vote in huge elections like these, then they won't even get out of bed for a referendum on tax credits for stay-at-home parents. Sure, we might be excited at first but, as time goes on, the turnout will dwindle until all our decisions end up being made by the sort of crackpot who maintains that their voice deserves to be heard above all others. The fringes. The political extremes. People who leave comments on websites. Newspaper columnists. That's the fastest way possible to send any country into the toilet, surely.

Farage has used Switzerland as an example of the power of public referendums. Last year, the Swiss went through 11 referendums, for executive pay and spacial planning and asylum law amendments and salary capping and epidemia law and lord knows what else. It was constant, and it makes being Swiss sound rubbish. Remember how pious Twitter got during the last election, with everyone blithering on forever about how important it is to vote? That's basically Switzerland all the time. Who'd want to live under conditions like that?

Done sparingly, as the Scottish independence vote is proving, a referendum can be a big, exciting punctuation mark in history. But it's like Christmas – it's fun now and again, but you'd kill yourself if it happened every day. Especially when you have to buy Christmas dinner at a 24-hour garage.