I started the column last week by admitting I was wrong and I’m going to start the column this week by admitting Alex Salmond is right. Who would have thought it. Perhaps the world has gone mad. Perhaps everything has changed. Let’s see.

The reason I mention Mr Salmond is that the former First Minister has been told by his council that a “Yes” sign in his garden will have to come down unless he gets planning permission for it. The wooden sign, in the shape of the logo used in 2014, has stood on Mr Salmond’s property in Aberdeenshire for 18 months or so. But now there’s a problem: someone has complained.

The council’s response to it all is that a sign such as Mr Salmond’s requires consent and because no such consent is in place, it is a breach of planning. The council is also apparently concerned that the sign’s proximity to Mr Salmond’s house means it impacts on a listed building. A council spokesman said it was their intention now to pursue the removal of the sign or investigate a formal planning application for its retention.

Mr Salmond’s defence has been typically colourful. The retention of the sign, he said, involved issues of freedom of expression. He also said the officials of Aberdeenshire were guilty of pettifogging officialdom and should get their priorities right. He has written to the council to demand a rethink.

As I say: I think Mr Salmond is right on this one. If someone wants to put up a big “Yes” sign in their garden, they should be free to do so and the same goes for flags. I would also say that, even though Scots aren’t really the kind of people who go in for big public political displays in their gardens (or at least they weren’t before 2014) if someone really wants to do so, then fair enough. As Mr Salmond says, it involves freedom of expression.

We’ve also seen something like this before – in Mr Salmond’s own domain in fact. A few years ago, Yes campaigners draped banners over a building in Elgin and there were objections to the council that it was spoiling the high street and people should be free to go about their business without intrusive political messages. However, the people who put up the signs said they suspected that the real objection wasn’t to the signs but to the message on them and I suspect they were right.

But I wonder if the people who erect these kind of signs – and they’ve certainly lingered long after the referendum – ever consider the kind of effect it has on other people and whether, in fact, political banners of any persuasion bring out the worst in us. A colleague of mine put up a “No Thanks” sign by the roadside in the Borders during the referendum and it was so frequently vandalised that she and her friends eventually posted a rota of guards on it.

I saw a similar kind of thing for weeks on end on the M77: a spot by the side of the road was “Yes” for a few days before it was torn down and changed to “No” and then “Yes” again and so on. I’ve also told you before about the row of houses behind my aunt’s place in Dumfries where one neighbour put up a flagpole with a saltire on it only for his neighbour on one side to retaliate with a union flag and the neighbour on the other side with a saltire. It’s slightly pathetic really. And ugly.

The people who put up these signs – and as far as I can see it does seem to be exclusively Yes signs that are lingering – should also ask themselves if they really achieve anything; if they work. I was sitting having a sandwich at Shawlands Cross on Saturday when a group of men – why is it always men and why are they always old? – turned up and started erecting Yes banners and flags. What were they hoping to achieve? Did they convince anyone? Did they change minds? It seems unlikely when the real political battleground is in a land far, far away: social media.

I accept that my reaction here is not objective and that if the group of men in Shawlands had started putting up “No” banners, I wouldn’t have felt the same kind of negative reaction. But what are the chances? Tell me the last time you saw a unionist sign in Scotland. Now drive around Scotland and tell me about the Yes signs you see, by the roadside, in a field, on a house, or in the garden of a former First Minister. Some people still want us to know what they think as we drive past their house and so up go the “Yes” signs.

My problem with it all – and I saw quite a few of these signs when I was up near Aviemore the other week – isn’t just that the signs are pointless; as I say, the real battleground is online. We also shouldn’t need a council’s permission to make political statements from our own home. If people want to put up “Yes” signs or flags or banners, then for God sake let them.

But if people have the right to put up these things, then the rest of us have the right to say what we think about them and perhaps the council was on to something when they said Mr Salmond’s Yes sign would impact on the setting of a listed building. I know his part of Scotland well – it’s where most of my ancestors came from – and it’s hard to imagine that it, or any other part of the country, could ever be improved by more flags or banners or ugly Yes signs.

The basic problem here I think, and it’s probably why putting up Yes signs remains a minority sport, is that the big political banners that still linger in Scotland are antithetical to the way most Scots like to do things, and especially, in my experience, to the way Scots from the North-east like to do things. Erecting a sign in your garden is the equivalent of shouting your views into the street at passers-by. It’s unsubtle, and rather arrogant, and most of all, let’s face it: it’s pretty vulgar.

It will not stop of course. Most us didn’t erect banners in our gardens in 2014 and most of those that did took them down a long time ago although, who knows, if and when there’s another referendum, we may erect new banners and unfurl new flags. But in the meantime, Yes signs linger on from 2014, in Shawlands and in the Highlands and in other places, relics of a different battle, and in the garden of a former First Minister, an old battle standard in the redoubt of an old soldier.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.