A flat tax is a single-rate tax on income (and possibly on other things as well). The idea is to have as wide a tax base as possible, so for a given amount of tax revenue collected, the marginal rate will be lower than in a non-flat tax; this is intended to boost economic activity.
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Chris Dillow asks, rhetorically, of David Cameron:

Can he point to a single thing the British state does better than the private sector, where comparisons are possible?

The first example I thought of is the BBC’s news website. According to Alexa, it’s the most popular UK-based news website, and the 3rd most popular in the world.

It’s unlikely that Chris Dillow thinks the UK state is dramatically less competent than states in general, so we can generalise this question to: Is there a single thing states do better than the private sector, where comparisons are possible? He evidently believes the answer to be “no”. But look at the medium for his message: he’s using the state-developed Internet network and the state-developed World-Wide Web hypertext system.

If the private sector really does do everything better than the state, then we’d be using a privately-developed computer network and a privately-developed hypertext system; it’s not as if there haven’t been many examples of each. Something to remember when blogs like Samizdata say that states do nothing well.

According to the New York Times, the Afghan government is dragging its feet in eradicating poppy cultivation:
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While the Liberal democrats overall gained seats (up from 51 to 62 now), they also lost 5 seats to the Tories. Was this because of “tactical unwind”?
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