By passing the referendum on the Single European Act, boredom inducing legislation of such staggering complexity that it is little wonder nobody understood it, we introduced a system which has made the lives of MEPs considerably easier. For example, qualified majority voting was introduced for various issues, which meant that if we did not achieve a qualified majority – about 334 votes – the legislation in question would not be passed. As a result, MEPs had to get serious and make up their minds on whether they wanted legislation to be passed. As we had to stop messing around with useless, ego-boosting amendments, it perked us up considerably.