I can’t say that I’m very familiar with the UK laws in depth other than that they have been in operation for many years and are generally considered effective.
For referenda there’s no reason you can’t have a publicly funded campaign for yes and no and limit private advertising, we have something like that here in Australia.
Sortition, random selection, when combined with an elected body has a lot of benefits. It has the advantage of having professional politicians with institutional knowledge and relationships while also having a body the that is actually representative of the larger population.
It made me laugh, it’s not silly per se but the idea that such an esteemed title as blue zone was earned through pension fraud is hilarious.
The more schadenfreude version is that the idea of these blue zones has been trotted out ad nauseum by longevity nuts for at least a decade and now they look like fools.