Ash Bhardwaj

Broadcaster, journalist, keynote speaker. Author of ‘Why We Travel’.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Damn Ukraine! 😂

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

William Arnold traveled about 1,700 miles from Cornwall to the Isle of Lewis so that he could place 52 calls from one red telephone box.

The kiosk at Eneclate is a rare double-door K6, built to stand the winds of the Outer Hebrides. Only two such boxes are still known in their original places, and this one still had a working line. Under BT’s rules, at least 52 calls in twelve months is one of the measures that can keep a payphone from being taken out. Arnold set out to give this box that count.

After raising money for the trip he reached the kiosk in August 2026. With winds near 45 miles an hour and rain outside, he stood inside and worked through the list. The session took about two hours and cost around 36 pounds. Many calls went to people who had backed the journey. Some of them rang the box in return.

His interest in vanishing payphones began in 2022, when he tried to use one on a photography trip and found the line dead. Since then he has recorded working kiosks and argued for their value in rural areas where mobile coverage can still fail. BT says about 9,000 public payphones remain in service in the United Kingdom, down from roughly 20,000 two years earlier.

The 1,700-mile errand was meant to look a little absurd. At the end of it stood a rare red box that had lasted more than seventy years, and for another year, at least, its meter showed plenty of calls.

[Edward Lucas @edwardlucas]

please celebrate Estonia's success but don't call Estonia (or any of the Baltic states) "tiny". It's patronising, orientalist and inaccurate, implying that these are exotic oddities, not serious countries. Estonia by land area (45,339 km²) is the same size as Denmark: ~44,493 km². Switzerland: ~41,290 km² and the Netherlands: ~41,198 km². Nobody calls them “tiny”. And in population terms Estonia is bigger than Luxembourg, Iceland Malta and (the Republic of) Cyprus, none of which get called “tiny”.
“Tiny” should be reserved for the truly teeny-weeny like Liechtenstein, Monaco and the other micro-states.

[Kateryna Lisunova @KaterynaLis]

Russians are destroying the historic districts of Kyiv. Those districts are older than russia itself.

PHOTOS: Ian Dobronosov

[Edward Stringer @edwardstrngr65]

Is it not obvious that our national culture has been severely warped? It is now accepted, across pretty much all social divides, that if you don’t game the system you’re not trying. And so possibly stupid. https://t.co/mDQvuZoNvG

[Centrism Fan Acct 🔹 @Wilson__Valdez]

I just don't know how you can compete in a media-environment where Biden flubbing a word in a press conference receives complete media saturation coverage as proof of how senile/unfit he is for the job, while Trump (whose brain is just totally gone) telling very specific, completely imagined lies about his heroism at a fking 9/11 memorial (!!!!) will barely get any coverage outside of the partisan lib-sphere.

It's just.....beyond words.

[Ash Bhardwaj @AshBhardwaj]

As I mentioned on @Monocle_Radio the other day, RUS has very little it could offer the USA, economically. But plenty that it could offer greedy individuals.

[Edward Stringer @edwardstrngr65]

Many reputable news outlets now covering that a significant chunk of the talks in the Kremlin were “economic” and covered “mutually beneficial joint projects” between RUS and the USA. This looks grubby, to say the very least.

https://t.co/1NCtKmlLmB

[Monocle Radio @Monocle_Radio]

Monocle on Sunday: @isabelhilton and @AshBhardwaj join @EmmaNelsonMedia to look back at the week’s news. Plus: the latest from Oslo and key takeaways from Monocle’s Quality of Life conference with Tyler Brûlé
https://t.co/j3dZhkRTnl

[Ash Bhardwaj @AshBhardwaj]

@John_ForemanCBE “Diplomat”

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

PETRAEUS: Britain's response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine provides particularly powerful example. From late 2021 onward, UK demonstrated strategic clarity.

Your leaders publicly recognized the nature of Russian threat earlier than most, provided military assistance before and after the invasion, expanded intelligence support, imposed sanctions, trained Ukrainian forces, and consistently demonstrated leadership, even as others, including my country [the US] at times, hesitated.

Your Prime Minister was also the first major Western leader to visit Kyiv after the invasion, and despite changes of government and significant challenges at home, Britain has maintained remarkable continuity in recognizing both the threat posed by Russia and the imperative of sustained support for Ukraine.

Your new Prime Minister rightly made his first trip overseas to Kyiv to be there to help celebrate Ukraine's 35th anniversary of independence.

That deserves recognition, not merely because Britain stood with a country attacked by a common adversary, but because it demonstrated the quality that matters most in periods of strategic change: the ability to recognize reality clearly and act decisively before others do so.

[Benedict Allen @benedictallen]

Hot idea: name heatwaves after oil companies...

[Lionel Barber @lionelbarber]

Huge FT scoop which confirms essence of @anneapplebaum prescient book Autocracy Inc and challenge to American power; Russia secretly helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles https://t.co/MinkJTTVfm via @ft

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

APPLEBAUM: Corruption investigations in Ukraine are coming from inside Ukrainian government.

Try to imagine that right now in United States, and you can't do it.

It's as if FBI were investigating Trump family companies, which is unimaginable, right?

TARLOV: That's very funny.

APPLEBAUM: In other words, these are Ukrainian inside the government organizations that are dedicated to looking for corruption and fighting it.

And so, actually, what you have, this exposure of corruption, is evidence of democratic institutions working in Ukraine.

The fact that so much is known, that it's openly discussed, that people debate it and talk about what should be done.

That makes Ukraine right now a more open and more effective democracy than United States.

Always keep that in mind when you talk about corruption.

[French Response @FrenchResponse]

Sovereign countries don't come with a "give" button.

[Luke Tryl @LukeTryl]

🧵🇺🇦🇬🇧It's Ukrainian Independence Day and Andy Burnham carried out his first official visit to Ukraine. Since the war broke out between two thirds and three quarters of Britons have consistently said it matters to the UK that Ukraine wins the war.

[Monocle Radio @Monocle_Radio]

The Globalist: @inzyrashid discusses Washington’s new sanctions on Iran, @AshBhardwaj looks at Andy Burnham’s Ukraine visit, @Charles_Hecker goes through the papers and @tomosdlewis has a round-up of Canadian news
https://t.co/KZMyzvKjlL

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

Ukraine has now been independent for 35 years. 12 of them fighting against Russia’s murderous effort to extinguish that independence.

[David Blagden @blagden_david]

“Dutch use of one-way attack drones to destroy the ROYAL JAMES shows that major surface combatants are obsolete, that Britain is finished as a significant naval power, and that future maritime contests will be determined by uncrewed vessels”

- Some breathless pundit, 8 June 1672

[Ash Bhardwaj @AshBhardwaj]

I miss this internet