THERE’S just eight weeks to go until we’re to cast what could be the most significant vote of our lifetime. I’m not making a flippant reference to the X Factor, the Voice, BGT or one of the other occasions where our vote will not count but we might still be charged, I’m talking about the big one; The Referendum. Do we want to remain a part of the European Union or do we want to withdraw? It’s a question of huge significance and one that will affect lives not only within the United Kingdom, but possibly throughout Europe, for many years to come.

For such an important vote, I hope that there’s a big turnout. I consider it a duty to vote as this right was hard won. But, then again, people do have the democratic right to abstain and some make a conscious decision to do just that. One thing that might deter some from voting, though, is simple uncertainty. I’ve never known a vote before where so many people just don’t know which way they’re going to go. Sure, lots of people have made their minds up but others, like me, have not. One week I’m a Brexiter, next I’m a Bremainer and so the pendulum continues to swing.

It’s just so difficult to get the facts. Plenty of people will claim to have the facts but I don’t believe they have. They certainly have an agenda, but that’s not the same as the facts. A friend of mine, John, a lawyer, summed it up quite well, saying: “it’s as impossible to gather an immutable fact for either option from the politicians, as it is to have any degree of confidence on either option before us being the right one for the UK. Reason being, there are no certainties either way and anyone who says leaving or staying will mean this or that, is either a liar or misguided fool!” Maybe John is being a bit harsh in his judgement but I share his frustration.

Some people, on the other hand, have no such uncertainty. Many of those who advocate us leaving the EU put forward strong economic arguments that purport to show how much better off we’d be ploughing a less federal furrow. They argue that we’d be able to control our own borders and would thrive in many ways. Many of them put a good and rational case. Less so their brethren who pepper their rhetoric with claims that the EU is a ‘politburo dictatorship’ or a police state, run by unelected bureaucrats presiding over a Soviet-style command economy. They blithely trot out ‘facts’ about illegal regulations will destroy most of our 4.5 million small businesses and claim that there are more than 3,000 "crimes against the EU state" on our statute book.

When they start talking about the whole shebang being run by the Bilderberg Group and the Freemasons, most of us turn off.

Even some of the less rabid Brexiters seem to think that they are the only ones who care for our country. And that gets my goat and nudges me towards the Bremainer camp, a camp from which I’ve again heard many rational, well-considered and persuasive arguments.

But a lot of those who want to stay are easily a match for the other side when it comes to antagonising and irritating the undecided. So many seem to assume that they are the only ones with truly open and independent minds; that they are the only ones capable of doing their own research. More than a few in that camp imply that anyone with intelligence must inevitably conclude we're better off in. The more I'm told that I'm an idiot if I vote to leave, the more I'm likely to put a cross in the ‘out’ box.

I still can’t make my mind up. I’m in my fifties. Whatever happens, it’s probably not going to change my life that much. So I’m tempted to ask my children (they’re in their twenties) how they want me to vote. They’re the ones who will have to live with the consequences.