Unfit kids?...I wonder why!

I heard a report on today's news about scientists in Essex who had carried out a survey with 300 children to establish their cardio-vascular fitness levels compared to a group the same size about ten years ago. They have discovered that todays kids are less fit than those of ten years ago.
Well I for one am not surprised and although today's kids spend more time in front of the television or using computers and playing computer games, we cannot put all the blame on them.
Today's kids are ferried everywhere by over protective parents because no-one has time to walk any more and every stranger is a potential paedophile. Kids rarely walk to school and they don't play outside as much as they used to.
When I was a kid (OK, so it was in the middle of last century) we walked to school which was one and a half miles away and week ends and holiday times our parents hardly saw us. We would go out to play straight after we had washed up the breakfast dishes and our body clocks would get us home in time for lunch and tea. We didn't need watches and we couldn't afford them anyway. Our parents had warned us about not talking to strangers etc. and also what we had to do if ever there was anyone suspicious about. Those were the days when children respected adults including the local bobby! Although our diet was not as high in sugars and fats as todays' kids and we didn't have the choice of foods, we ate what we were given then all the calories we consumed were soon burnt off with the running about we did.
Goverment and local education authorities are also equally to blame because it was they who sold off huge amounts of school sports and playing fields to developers for massive amounts of money then removed a lot of sports and games from the National curriculum. We also had far more sports in our school timetable and we took full advantage of any opportunity to participate in sports outside of school hours.
This problem won't go away but perhaps if politicians, schools and parents got their heads together they could at least move towards solving the problem of childrens' cardio vascular fitness for up and coming generations.