SAM Allardyce was only half right in labelling England a lazy nation this week.

It was true what he was saying about English kids not doing enough exercise.

But what about all that effort they put into playing computer games and eating junk food?

It was odd seeing Allardyce's views attracting front page instead of back page attention. But you could see where he was coming from.

England doesn't produce athletes. It produces fat kids.

What happens in America, happens in this country 20 years later, and anyone who has been to Florida and seen the outrageous obesity which is prevalent in that state will have had ample forewarning of what's in store over here.

Sam is right to blame the parents and the government. Parents are by far the biggest culprits, being either too busy, too lazy or too ignorant to feed their kids decent food and good advice.

This and previous governments have overseen a situation where school playing fields have been sold off in their square miles and competitive sport has been systematically driven out of schools due to pathetic political correctness.

Before I went on holiday to France where, incidentally, the campsite swimming pool showed up the enormous difference between podgy English kids and super-slim French and Spanish youngsters I saw the benefit of a school having a sports day.

Our local primary school is one of just 40 per cent which, in recent years, has not succumbed to the ridiculous theory that sports days should be banned because they cause upset.

In all the years I have attended the school's sports days, I have seen more than a thousand kids laugh, cheer, celebrate, compete hard and, most importantly, enjoy the races.

And, in all that time, I have only ever seen two kids cry. Those two were looked after and the experience will stand them in good stead for future life when they, like everybody, will have to get used to failure at time.

Are the tears of the 0.2 per cent really good reason to take away sports day for the millions of kids who love and benefit from it?

The political correctness brigade think so and they are dangerously wrong.

More worrying is that they are dangerously influential, as proved by the speed with which other competitive sport has been stripped from primary and secondary schools in this country.

Other factors which contribute to the lack of athleticism being produced in England are the more dangerous society we live in these days and the fact that kids can't be bothered to exercise or play in the street like they used to.

England is no place to bring up a budding sportsman or woman.

Lazy parents and a slobbish youth culture has led to a lifestyle of pizza, burgers, computer games and television which we have no chance of changing for the better because it is just too easy.