LSMedia or Liverpool student media at liverpoolstudentmedia.com is a brand new website launched by the University of Liverpool's students to promote and support talented Liverpool student's creative written, visual or radio content.

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With an election almost certainly imminent, it’s no surprise that we are being inundated with campaign posters and interviews with politicians. However it did come as quite a surprise when I turned a page of this month’s edition of Glamour magazine and found an interview with the Conservative Party leader David Cameron. This glossy is not usually renowned for its high brow articles (this month's edition also hosts classics such as ’50 sex questions you’d never ask out loud’ and ‘OMG Dannii Minogue’s pregnant') and so an interview with a prospective Prime Minister came as quite a shock. It seems only fair to commend the magazine for incorporating some politics into the usual fare, especially when we consider that Glamour is mainly read by young women who are, according to polls, apathetic towards voting. If the way to inspire an interest in politics in the youth is to position it neatly between the horoscopes and the fashion pages, then I see nothing wrong with this, making the issue relevant and current, seems to me, the best possible way to go. As for Cameron, the motivation behind his partaking seems reasonably simple; the article will create publicity and manages to reach an audience, whom one would hope are prospective voters, which he may not have reached before. It was not in fact, that Glamour magazine were doing a political that I found odd, it was what followed the interview.

          The questions posed in the interview are as one would expect, wars, taxes, the NHS, however many are asked with special relevance towards women and how they would be affected by a Conservative government. Nothing out of the ordinary until I turn the page again and find a separate article entitled ‘Does David have the Xfactor?’, this entails Cameron being asked questions about modern youth culture with the interviewer challenging him with pressing issues such as “Who or what are the following: RPattz?”. It may come as no surprise that the Conservative leader bumbled his way through these questions, getting maybe one or two right. Shock horror a leading politician can’t answer questions on a nickname for a teen hearthrob! Would we really want him to be able to? This led me to thinking about a conversation I had had with some friends earlier, where one had suggested he would much prefer a Prime Minister who was in touch with pop culture. Perhaps it’s just me, but I find the whole thing absurd; far from persuading me to vote for them it simply makes me cringe. Surely it’s not only me who finds it excruciating that New Labour used phrases like ‘Cool Britannia’ or that Gordon Brown has Leona Lewis on his Ipod. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a completely out of touch Prime Minister however I’d rather they kept their music tastes and comments about celebrities to themselves and instead focused on running the country. I’d prefer a leader who could wax lyrical about foreign policy and tax reductions rather than someone who can name Brangelina’s children. In fact, I don’t think its too far to say that if the leader of one of the worlds most influential countries can name Katie Price’s new husband, then they should probably spend a little more time running the country and a little less time reading Heat!

Iona Stonehouse.