First No posters and badges spotted in Edinburgh

They say that the first sight of a swallow is the harbinger of spring. This week I saw my first No badges and posters, which is hardly a sign of either swallows or spring, more like the vultures of autumn, but at least the No campaign is putting in an effort at last.

Yesterday I was driving home through one of the leafier suburbs when I saw a solitary No poster in the window of a large house. Today I glimpsed a No bumper sticker on the rear of a rather nice Mercedes, and then my joy knew no bounds when I saw a cove with a No Thanks badge on his lapel.

I would like to claim that the Yes posters are festooning every window, but that is sadly not the case. That said, more and more windows have them, and I would guess that about five percent of the houses in my area are sporting Yes posters. Badges are much more common, almost ubiquitous in fact. A couple of weeks ago the early adopters of the Yes badges would stop and chat to each other on the street, but now they seem to be on almost every lapel.

If the result of this referendum relied just on commitment to the cause, the Yes team would walk it by a mile.