WOULDN'T it be great to live in a world where common sense prevailed?

A world without speed cameras, so we could all drive as fast as we liked, because, naturally, we know best.

And a world without traffic wardens, so we could stop on the zebra crossing without worrying about getting a ticket while we just popped in to the bank for a couple of minutes, honest.

Well, no, it wouldn't. And that's not just the opinion of one miserable old grouch with a grudge against selfish motorists - it's a fact.

I refer to the situation in St Albans, where the local police force decided to get rid of 50 traffic wardens to free up £1 million for the fight against crime - and anarchy now rules.

I've got friends who live in St Albans, simply because they can't afford London, where they work. They don't like it much, say it's too quiet, too middle class and Middle England, not much happening, not much to do.

Well now they've finally got a bit of excitement and notoriety in their lives, thanks to the hard-up cops and a council, that despite having 15 months' notice, couldn't bring itself to organise an alternative force of traffic wardens in time.

Now the people of one of England's oldest cities rule, and it's just like the good old days when brute force counted and a social conscience was for cissies.

So the pay and display car parks are empty and instead people are parking their big lumps of tin on pavements and double yellow lines, in disabled bays, bus lanes and taxi ranks. Fire engines and ambulances can't get to emergencies, but what do those who block their way care? That's someone else's problem, isn't it?

Let's not kid ourselves, though, that this couldn't happen here. There's a small supermarket near where I live, with a car park on the opposite side of the road - it would cost just a few pence to buy a short stay ticket (there are always plenty of spaces), yet still they park on the pedestrian crossing and waddle in to stock up on fags and booze.

At the bigger out-of-town superstores, why do people with perfect mobility (and often, it seems, the means to spend as much on a leather-lined tank-like car as some of us spend on a house) persist in hogging clearly-marked disabled bays? Why do they do it? For the same reason they put their foot down once they've cleared the cameras: everyone's at it, there are only so many people the hard-pressed cops and wardens can collar... and, bottom line, because they know there's a very good chance they'll get away with it.

One St Albans resident doesn't think the re-introduction of traffic wardens will do much good. It's too late, she says: "Anarchy has gained too strong a foothold." Sadly, she could well be right.