On 20 March it will be exactly 5 years since the first US and British bombs hit Iraq in the current war.

Yet if the media is anything to go by, it would seem as if Britain's involvement in the Iraq war is already a thing of the past. These days the war and occupation gets barely a mention, unless you count stories about the prelude to war - like how the Information Commissioner just decided that the minutes of meetings of the Cabinet back in 2003 should be released to the public.

Instead we are being treated to prince Harry's public school boy Rambo games in Afghanistan. This got more coverage in just one week than the Iraq war has had in six months!

In fact it seems that everything possible is being done to draw attention away from the battlefield. So now the public is being blamed for apparently insulting military personnel in England's bases to the point where they are told not to go out in their uniforms. As if the "public" would be idiotic enough to behave this way! Actually, the government's campaign is suffering from a split personality because apparently it is the "public" which now wants a "war day" public holiday to honour "heroes"!

But what is the government really hiding by these diversionary tactics? A lot, in fact! It turns out that British troops are going to stay in Basa and that there will be no "drawdown" at all, as promised last year in October! At the time Brown was thinking about calling an election. Now he faces the May local elections. No wonder he prefers prince Harry to grab the headlines!

He wants it kept very quiet that 6,800 military personnel will remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future and that the base at Basra International Airport is not being dismantled, but reinforced and expanded with a new military hospital. And yes, they will need that hospital. Because the deaths and injuries continue to mount as the rival militias fight it out with each other and with British troops - while the Iraqi population, caught in the middle, bears the brunt.

5 years after the start of this criminal invasion, there remains only one side for the working class to take - against the British government's continued war and with the brothers and sisters in Iraq and in this country who are caught up in a catastrophic conflict, not of their making. Troops out now!

In the run-up to Wednesday's budget the clamour of the fat cats for even more fat has now turned into real hysteria.

Britain already has one of the lowest corporation taxes in Europe, thanks to Brown's servility to big business. But that is not enough. Through their Tory mouthpiece, the bosses are now demanding that corporation tax should be cut from 28% to 25%. As to the CBI, it has come up with a long-winded report signed by a dozen illustrious (and certainly very well paid) academics, who conclude that corporation tax should be cut to 18% within the coming 8 years. Whatever next!

Have these people got such a short memory that they have already forgotten that, under Thatcher, companies used to pay 33% of their profits to the tax man? Or are they saying now that Thatcher was something of a closet socialist?

This is not serious. No only do companies get roads and airports for free from the state, not only are they able to rely on having a fit workforce thanks to a health service paid for by the state, not to mention all the various state subsidies they get under all kinds of spurious pretexts, but they want to pay nothing for it? They must be joking!

Just as it is not serious to claim that cutting the tax privileges of the wealthy who reside abroad, for example, would "damage the economy", as the CBI keeps doing.

Why should multinational companies be allowed to pay the salaries of their directors based in London through a Gibraltar subsidiary, so that these directors pay taxes in Gibraltar, but not in London - meaning that they pay 50% less tax and not one penny of it goes to the Treasury? This is what the specialists call "non-dom status". Very few countries allow that, but Britain does, because Brown does not dare to end such privileges.

The fact that Britain is considered as a sort of tax haven in other countries does encourage foreign companies, mainly in finance, to set up shop in London. But what would be the big deal if they did not? It would only mean that the City would lose a few thousand overpaid executives at most. And so what? They create nothing, neither value, nor jobs for real working people, but they push housing prices upwards. Only the luxury industry would lose out, not the real economy. And what does that matter to the rest of us?

Companies and the wealthy must pay their share for the common needs of all. It would be only right for them to pay a lot more proportionally than us - not less - because they earn a lot more and because, being profiteers, they have already made us pay in advance!