Seb Schmoller
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schmoller.net
Seb Schmoller
@schmoller.net
1.1K followers 1K following 11K posts
Wrote/ran TUC courses for union reps. Led Sheffield College's educational IT. Led ALT. Did techish consulting. Now involved in Further/Adult Ed/School governance. Finishing a maths degree. Walking a Border Collie.

Politics, outdoors, cycling, Sheffield.
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Stanford University's November working paper in the economic impact of Brexit. (Abstract below, including authors.)
siepr.stanford.edu/publications...
This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process. Comparing these with contemporary forecasts – providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning micro- literature of social science predictions – shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade.
November 28, 2025 at 8:46 PM
schmoller.net
From Sheffield's Meersbrook Park this evening, looking out over the City towards the Hallamshire Hospital.
View towards Hallamshire Hospital from Meersbrook Park in Sheffield
November 27, 2025 at 4:57 PM
schmoller.net
On National Populism. This post by @jydenham.bsky.social made me think. Particularly striking section bellow: open.substack.com/pub/nationst...
National populism operates like an ‘ideological money laundering system’ through which malevolent ideas and world views can enter a broader political debate. White supremacism, Christian nationalism (or civilisational Christianity), and climate change scepticism would have more limited traction but for the way in which national populism enables them to be framed as appeals to the national interest and ideas of the nation. This transmission mechanism opens national politics to the influence of highly organised, well financed, international right wing populist networks which do not have roots in or links to the nation being targeted.
November 21, 2025 at 10:25 AM
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What lies behind the rise of Rotherham? @jpspencer.bsky.social reviews the data. The answer isn't very clear, & may involve AMRC, growth in IT-related and service businesses. (It'd be interesting to get a locally informed Make UK & @techsy.bsky.social view on this.)
open.substack.com/pub/futureno...
Productivity chart for SY towns
November 20, 2025 at 8:40 AM
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"Significant divisions exposed [within the Labour] party as angry backbenchers vow to force changes to hardline proposals." Report by @jessicaelgot.bsky.social and Rajeev Syal, with quote below from @enversol.bsky.social: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of Refugee Council, said: “What’s being forgotten here is that behind these proposals are men, women and children who have survived war, persecution and unimaginable loss, and who arrive in the UK with almost nothing. “These reforms sound tough, but they won’t fix the real problems in the asylum system. Instead, they risk creating more delays, more stress and more inhumane treatment for the very people the system is meant to protect.”
November 17, 2025 at 11:40 PM
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"Incompetence persists because, for some powerful interests, it works quite nicely." Terrific piece by @chrisdillow.bsky.social on competence/incompetence in government, politics and the media:
open.substack.com/pub/chrisdil...
I fear, though, that there’s something else. Our ruling class has forgotten what good politics even is. It is, at root, the solving (or at least amelioration) of collective action problems - the fact that our individual plans and actions don’t naturally yield a well-functioning society. So, for example, we need a collective agreement to provide public services. Which of course entails a trade-off: better public services mean less private consumption. The job of politicians in a well-functioning polity is to recognise these trade-offs and to argue for their preferred choice.
November 15, 2025 at 11:00 AM
schmoller.net
Murder at the BBC, by @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social is well worth your time. Not least the Prescott-focused footnote.
open.substack.com/pub/davidaar... [The snippet below, from the main piece, particularly caught my eye.]
Had I been in that job I would have wanted to look at the use and abuse of statistics and polls, at the routine confusion of correlation with causality - a confusion almost ruthlessly exploited by campaigning groups trying to make a point. I’d question the excessive coverage of protests another, relying on victims as sources of policy a third. The constant sin of narrative bias would be a fourth and the habit of using political correspondents to cover issues that require policy expertise a fifth. I would ask what the complains of ordinary listeners and viewers would be if they knew what was going on, and I would tell the campaigners and their organised complaints and dodgy dossiers to take a running jump. Politely.
November 13, 2025 at 10:45 AM
schmoller.net
On the benefits of Park Run. By David Taylor-Gooby in @bylinetimes.bsky.social:
northeastbylines.co.uk/lifestyle/he...
The beauty of the Parkrun is that it is a very successful public health initiative which started as a purely voluntary event. It now has 880 all around the country, and in 23 countries abroad. It is estimated that at least 3.9 million people have done at least one. A recent study by Steve Hake from Sheffield Hallam University estimates that the health benefits, both physical and mental, could be as much as £668 million a year. And the good thing is that it is run by volunteers.
November 11, 2025 at 10:18 AM
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Crested Coral fungus on Beech leaves, in Gleadless Valley's Cat Lane Woods, Sheffield:
November 7, 2025 at 11:33 AM
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Cruck barn by Westfield Bury in Hertfordshire:
Cruck barn by Westfield Bury in Hertfordshire:
November 5, 2025 at 1:07 PM
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A loveliness (!) of ladybirds, Limb Valley, Sheffield.
A cluster of ladybirds.
November 1, 2025 at 2:15 PM
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From a backyard looking up towards Dover cliffs, where there are (latterly, after reintroduction) Red Billed Choughs:
Dover Cliffs
October 25, 2025 at 9:04 AM
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Ground very well covered in this interview/discussion between @edwardluce.bsky.social and @nickcohen.bsky.social: spotify.link/l8rN1v70IXb
October 24, 2025 at 11:16 AM
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Fungus on fungus. Honey Fungus, of which there's been a glut this year in Sheffield Gleadless Valley's Lees Hall Woods, now being consumed by mould.
Fungus on honey fungus
October 21, 2025 at 9:53 AM
schmoller.net
Clear FT piece on budget options, by @jdportes.bsky.social, calling for decisive and beneficial long term changes, rather than a cobbling together of piecemeal adjustments around the edges.
www.ft.com/content/a06d... (£)
The good news is that such a package is on offer, and commands a wide consensus among economists. First, reform to the taxation of housing, including progressive abolition of stamp duty and council tax and a move to a property tax. Even better if this could create dedicated funding for social care. Second, switch the burden of direct taxes from national insurance to income tax, increasing taxes on “unearned” income. Third, reform the absurdly complex tax structure for those earning £50,000 to £150,000.
October 20, 2025 at 6:02 PM
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Cat Lane Woods in Gleadless Valley, in Sheffield (where you are hardly ever more than a few minutes away from a sliver of ancient woodland):
Cat Lane Woods
October 16, 2025 at 9:44 AM
schmoller.net
It was pre-Internet, with horrendous telephone charges, dialing into a BT-operated "point of presence" to give access to the "packet switched data network".
October 15, 2025 at 7:50 PM
schmoller.net
50 minute interview by Krishnan Guru-Murthy with Gershon Baskin. A much longer version of the interview on Chanel 4 News today: open.spotify.com/episode/7KSM...
October 13, 2025 at 7:24 PM
schmoller.net
B giving me the "higher life form looking patronisingly at an amoeba" look.
A border collie giving its co-owner the "higher life form looking patronisingly at an amoeba" look.
October 13, 2025 at 11:40 AM
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Autumn oak forest, Leeshall Woods, Gleadless Valley, Sheffield.
Autumn oak forest, Gleadless Valley, Sheffield.
October 12, 2025 at 10:10 AM
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A freely available AI literacy self-study tutorial from @sheffielduni.bsky.social about: rise.articulate.com/share/ckJWIi... via @altuk.bsky.social
October 10, 2025 at 12:54 PM
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Informative as ever, by @julesbirch.bsky.social:
julesbirch.com/2025/09/22/m...
A year into the government’s five-year target to build 1.5 million additional homes and signs of progress are thin on the ground. Indicators of new supply published on Friday estimate that 231,300 net additional homes were delivered in the just over 14 months between the start of the parliament on 9 July 2024 and 14 September 2025. At this rate, the government will struggle to hit one million additional homes in this parliamentary term, let alone 1.5 million.
October 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
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I'm all in favour of Ethio-Jazz.
Ethiopiques CD
October 9, 2025 at 3:08 PM
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"Welcome, protect, promote and integrate." Pope Leo's first Apostolic Exhortation, published on 4 October has a terrific section on migrants and refugees. www.vatican.va/content/leo-... [I've no religion.] Indirectly via @alexvont.bsky.social.
75. The Church’s tradition of working for and with migrants continues, and today this service is expressed in initiatives such as refugee reception centers, border missions and the efforts of Caritas Internationalis and other institutions. Contemporary teaching clearly reaffirms this commitment. Pope Francis has recalled that the Church’s mission to migrants and refugees is even broader, insisting that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.”
October 9, 2025 at 2:10 PM
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A Yorkshire Sculpture Park miniature?
October 9, 2025 at 1:19 PM