🌴 Influencer trip goes viral for wrong reasons + 📈 the BBC top 10 rich list + 💸 Is cash saving a waste of time?
Good afternoon and welcome back to The 99: the home of financial news and insights made simple. You can count on accessible, trustworthy, and unbiased news insights every Monday.
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📰 The 99 Quick News
👎 A bad week for… UK dog walkers (and the NHS)
The 99 TL;DR: A study in BMJ Injury Prevention reveals collisions between dog walkers and hand injuries are costing the NHS about £23 million annually. Most incidents involve fingers or wrists fractured when dogs yank on leads, especially affecting older adults and women.
Read more: Dogs pulling on leads cause large number of hand and wrist injuries in UK, study shows (Guardian)
👍 A good week for…First-Time buyers
The 99 TL;DR: First-time buyers could soon access more generous mortgage offers, as lenders including Nationwide respond to Bank of England changes allowing more high loan-to-income lending. Nationwide also cut salary requirements for its “Helping Hand” mortgage, opening doors for lower earners.
Why it matters: This could create 36,000 extra mortgage opportunities in a year, a significant shift for renters and younger buyers priced out of the housing market. More below.
Read more:
• Nationwide – Helping Hand mortgage update
Investing is about to be everywhere
+ 3 good things from the Mansion House speech
The 99 TL;DR: Last Tuesday evening the Chancellor gave the City of London’s finance bigwigs a speech about her plans for the UK’s financial system. It included getting more of us investing, easing red tape in financial services, and strengthening the UK economy.
What is the Mansion House speech?
It's a longstanding tradition where the Chancellor speaks at Mansion House (the Lord Mayor’s official residence) to outline key financial and regulatory policies. This year's address marks Reeves’ second, and comes at a time when she’s pivoting from fiscal caution (how the UK spends money) to a growth agenda.
3 good things
Banks to push investment alerts
From April 2026, banks will be allowed and encouraged to notify customers with cash savings about tailored investment opportunities. They’ll also launch a nationwide advertising campaign on investing.Red tape cuts in financial services
Reeves announced plans to strip away post‑2008 capital requirements, simplify the Senior Managers & Certification Regime, loosen banking ring-fencing, and reduce oversight by the Financial Ombudsman Service — all to foster “informed risk-taking”.Mortgage access and credit reform
More high loan-to-income mortgages will be available, allowing buyers to borrow over 4.5 times their income. The Bank of England-backed move could create 36,000 extra mortgages for first-time buyers in the first year. Nationwide is also lowering income thresholds for its "Helping Hand" deal, supporting 10,000 more buyers annually.Plus new rules allowing rental payments to count toward credit eligibility opening doors for first-time buyers.
Why does the government want you to invest?
Reeves is targeting the roughly 29 million UK adults with cash sitting in low-interest accounts including those maxing out their £20 000 annual cash ISA allowances, to encourage them into stocks and shares ISAs.
The UK has the lowest rate of retail investment in the G7.
Reeves wants more retail money in public markets, ideally within publicly listed British companies.
The reforms are part of her bid to make the UK a top global financial hub by 2035.
Is investing actually better?
The Treasury estimates that shifting just £2 000 from cash into equities could grow to £12 700 in 20 years. compared to only £ 2,700 in cash, potentially making savers £9 000 better off.
Over the past 20 years, the S&P 500 (a key stock market index) has returned an average of around 9% a year. Cash savings rarely come close, especially after inflation. While investing carries risk, over the long term it’s historically offered much stronger returns than leaving money in a savings account.
🔗 Sources
Reuters – “UK’s Reeves launches retail investment push…” (Reuters, The Guardian)
Reuters – “UK’s Reeves to ease access to mortgages…” (Reuters)
Reuters – “FCA cuts City fundraising red tape…” (The Times)
The Guardian – detailed rein on regulators (The Guardian)
“Not the Right Fit”: Why Zoe Hague Leaving Bali Sparked a Bigger Conversation
TL;DR: This is one to skip if influencer news makes you want to extract your eyeballs but former Army medic Zoe Hague (sister of Molly Mae Hague) made the news after cutting her Bali holiday short after two days, saying the real-life experience didn’t match the version seen online. She and husband Danny Rae then headed to Dubai where they have regularly holidayed. The tabloid media have had a field day and fanned the flames of a wider debate about Instagram-fuelled travel expectations, and the romanticisation of developing countries as holiday backdrops.
Who is Zoe Hague?
Once an Army medic, Zoe has pivoted to being a social media influencer since 2023. Her sister, Molly‑Mae Hague, is a Love Island alum.
What happened in Bali?
Zoe and her husband Danny Rae cut their wedding anniversary holiday short in Uluwatu, just two days in. They cited discomfort with basic amenities, hygiene concerns, and crowded tourist sites that clashed with their Instagram‑curated expectations of paradise
What’s the fuss?
In her YouTube vlog from Bali, titled ‘BALI VLOG | IT DIDN'T GO TO PLAN... ZOE RAE’
Zoe said:
“Since landing in Bali, something for us has not felt quite right.
“We came to Bali with high expectations as we’d seen on social media – everyone having such a lovely time, such gorgeous places to go for food and lovely beaches, lovely gyms, lovely coffee shops.
“If you took a picture of the coffee shop and zoomed out, you would see what the reality was. I don’t think the reality of Bali is shown much, or at all.”You can watch her full video here.
What went wrong and why are people unhappy?
The backlash included the usual influencer hate, but among more considered critiques, there were three key themes:
A lack of cultural awareness
A lack of understanding that Bali is a complex country with poverty and limited infrastructure. Naivety in expecting it to look like TikTok, and in being able to simply cancel a trip and rebook another destination.
A preference for sanitised, controlled spaces
Flying to Dubai for wanting a more polished, comfortable experience. Places like Dubai are often praised for their cleanliness, but that gloss is built on migrant labour from developing countries (like Indonesia), often underpaid and working in poor conditions. Countries like Dubai often have big budgets to pay influencers to visit and tell a particular story, whereas developing countries do not. It’s possible that her video will deter people from visiting Bali, a country that is suffering economically.
The belief that destinations should perform
Saying Bali “wasn’t really the right fit for us” kind of implies it failed to meet a set of personal expectations. The idea that countries are being consumed and discarded when they don’t deliver the right kind of holiday.
Bali Context: Beyond the Pics
Zoe wasn’t entirely clear on what it was that didn’t feel right but there was some allusion to things not being as picturesque on Instagram. Here are some important things to know about Bali:
Poverty & Inequality:
In Bali’s rural areas like Tabanan, many households relied on just ~$42/month of government support after the pandemic. Nationally, Indonesia’s poverty rate hovers around 9%, with ongoing inequality (Gini ≈0.38).
Infrastructure & Cleanliness:
Outside tourist hotspots, sanitation and public utilities vary significantly. While NGOs work to improve conditions, these efforts rarely feature in influencer content.Economic suffering post covid :
COVID devastated Bali’s tourism-dependent economy, causing an economic contraction of 9.3% in 2020. Unemployment surged with people relying on very minimal government aid. The cost of living has risen post-reopening, while wages remain low and recovery uneven.
💬 Your thoughts
Whatever you think, it’s tapped into bigger questions about how we travel, what we expect, and what stories we choose to share.
What do you think - please comment on this post
Are destinations like Bali being “commodified” or exoticised for social media with filtered versions that ignore rural poverty or hidden human costs?
Do influencers and travellers have every right to dislike a destination and share that?
And when somewhere doesn’t "fit", is it the destination that’s wrong, or our expectations of it?
🔗 Sources
Youtube - Zoe Hauge
Molly-Mae’s sister Zoe slammed for leaving Bali after 2 days - The Sun
Reddit thread discussing Zoe Hague’s Bali vlog - Reddit
The World Bank In Indonesia - World Bank
BBC Star Salaries:
Who’s Earning What in 2025?
The 99 TL;DR: It’s that time of year again when the BBC has to publish its annual list of people they pay loads of money to. Gary Lineker, despite stepping back in May, is still the corporation’s highest earner at over £1.35 million. Zoe Ball comes in second, followed by a line-up of sports pundits, news anchors, and Radio 1 & 2 favourites.
What is this list?
Every year, the BBC publishes the salaries of its highest-paid on-air talent as part of its commitment to transparency. The list only includes presenters paid directly by the BBC (not those paid through BBC Studios or independent production companies).
That means some big names, like Claudia Winkleman or Rylan Clark, won’t show up here.
So, who made the Top 10?
Here’s the top of the list, based on the BBC’s annual report for 2024–25:
Any notable changes?
Zoe Ball’s pay dropped significantly after leaving her daily breakfast slot in December.
Alan Shearer, Greg James, and Laura Kuenssberg all received pay increases.
Gary Lineker, despite controversy and leaving the BBC in May, remained in the top spot for the eighth year in a row.
Photograph: Sarah Jeynes/BBC/Sarah Jeynes
What are people saying?
Every year, this list sparks familiar questions:
Should licence fee-funded talent earn this much?
Should the BBC compete with commercial broadcasters on pay?
Why are entertainment and sport stars still out-earning many news journalists?
BBC Licence Fee 101:
£169.50/year (frozen until 2024, then will rise in line with inflation)
It funds TV, radio, online content and services like BBC iPlayer and the World Service
🔗 Sources
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That influencer story is ridiculous. It shows such a level of ignorance. How could you book an expensive holiday without doing a little research first? I agree that it suggests some people like to consume places - I don’t think everyone does. But then Dubai “wouldn’t be the right fit for me”. I hope that the news story will encourage people to go to Bali. I went in 2010 and would love to go back! Maybe I’ll start saving up.