Whatever the chicken entrails might be revealing now, it's a reasonable bet that the majority of older folk (except in Scotland) decided that they had had enough of being dictated to, not to mention the bureaucracy that has become the EU's trademark.
We were told last week that, as predicted by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, some 70 per cent of British legislation is now formulated in Brussels. It was also noted that the nation that had defied Hitler's attempt to take its sovereignty had given it away to an organisation that achieved by bureaucracy what the Third Reich had failed to achieve by force of arms.
It is telling too that the EU's response, a desire that Britain get out now as quickly as possible, seems to be based on the fear that others might seek to follow suit. Leaders both inside and outside the EU are warning that the bloc will not survive unless it heeds the anger and disillusionment of its citizens, a prospect that France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg all regard as plausible.
And as Winston Peters has pointed out, there might well be a lesson here for our politicians. The "power class", Mr Peters said on Saturday, were so "up themselves" that they could not see the obvious irony in their efforts to persuade voters to stay. And that phenomenon existed here too. He noted that an unnamed Green Party leader in New Zealand had "as good as said" that working men and women in Britain had got it wrong. The elitism of the Left, he said, was as bad as that of the Right.
Mr Peters reiterated his lack of respect for 'expert' economists, or "neo-liberal twits". There were experts in the medical profession and experts who flew aeroplanes, he said, but if economists were involved in either medicine or aviation half the country would be sick and aircraft would be crashing daily.
At the heart of the referendum result though was an obvious belief that people have been ignored. Others have been making the rules by which they live with no input from the democratic process. Britons had no say in how the EU affected their lives, to the ridiculous degree of declaring the maximum bend permissible in bananas and cucumbers, and the proportions of an EU pie or sausage.
Perhaps the referendum result was nothing more complicated than a large majority of older voters deciding that they had had enough of people they had no influence over telling them how to live their lives. And that's something that our politicians should take note of. We do not have an EU to answer to, but we are in the process of signing up for the TPP (although that might now be dead in the water given American sentiments), not to mention numerous other free trade deals that have been negotiated without our input and without consideration of what we might actually want.
It is all very well for governments to say they are creating an environment that will enable New Zealanders to prosper, but the TPP process has revealed a rich vein of discontent. Yes, we are a trading nation, and yes, if we don't export the bulk of what we produce we go broke. And yes, if access to overseas markets is eased by free trade agreements then we all stand to gain. But we are also a sovereign nation, and tolerant as we might be, sometimes to the point of dormancy, we value our ability to decide for ourselves.
And we are, of course, a member of the United Nations, hopelessly ineffective at what it was designed to achieve - an end to war - but constantly meddling in our lives. Over the years our governments have signed up to all sorts of UN declarations and treaties on our behalf, often without our knowledge and never with our acquiescence. Indeed it is unlikely that anyone, politicians included, would be able to rattle off just how many of these things 'we' have signed and to what effect.
Those who warn that we are slowly but surely being herded towards some form of one world government might be regarded in many quarters as conspiracy theorists, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that our society and our world are being shaped, carefully and deliberately, by people who believe they know what is best for us and have no intention of keeping us informed. There is no question that, courtesy of the UN, sovereignty in New Zealand is under attack, and has been for some time. Anyone who agrees with that should see the result of last week's Brexit referendum as a blow for democracy, the first sign of rebellion against politicians who refuse to listen to the people who elect them, and who until now have been able to placate their subjects, aided and abetted by the so-called experts who are held in such contempt by Winston Peters.
Whether or not the UK's decision to leave the EU proves to be the catalyst for a global financial meltdown remains to be seen, but it probably won't be. Certainly the pound lost ground against other currencies and sharemarkets tumbled, but neither phenomenon is unheard of. Give it a few days or weeks and see what happens. There would not seem to be any compelling reasons why a British declaration of independence should end the world as we know it, and sharemarkets and exchange rates can recover as quickly as they fall.
In the meantime, congratulations to those who voted to leave the EU. The bulldog spirit that once made Great Britain great has flickered back into life, and even we, way down here at the bottom of the world, might benefit from that.
