The Edinburgh Evening News has said "Ticket? Stick it!" to the city's parking attendants and is taking the unusual step of urging its readers to protest against any parking fines they receive.

The newspaper says there has been a rising stream of complaints about over-zealous ticketing by the attendants employed by the council's only agent, Central Parking Systems, and it has repeatedly carried stories on the subject.

Now it is hoping to force the council to act by calling for everyone who receives a parking fine not to pay and to appeal against it - no matter whether they are in the right or wrong.

It is hoped the threat of swamping the system will get the council to ensure rules of reasonable behaviour are issued and stuck to by the enforcers.

Evening News editor Ian Stewart said: "Since they took over regulation of Edinburgh's parking restrictions, this newspaper has lost count of the stories from readers concerned at the enforcers' over-zealous attitude.

"It did not take long for tales of harsh treatment to emerge - drivers being ticketed for parking inches over a yellow line, for parking where no yellow lines had been painted, for returning to their car minutes after their ticket had expired.

"No one, least of all the Evening News, is suggesting that there should not be parking restrictions and that they should not be enforced to protect the safety of both drivers and pedestrians and to ensure a traffic flows throughout the city.

"However, these rules should be enforced with some common sense and occasionally even compassion."

Central Parking Systems has had the contract in the city for less than a year, and in the first six months of this year, 109,700 tickets were handed out.

A spokeswoman for CPS said that the Evening News campaign would lead to more verbal abuse of its staff and stressed that employees are not paid any kind of commission.

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