IT HAS taken 23 years for the shameful Hillsborough incident to reach the point where accepted truth has come out and the sword of justice is poised to strike.  Better late than never – though it has been a long, hard, painful road for survivors and families.

On another front, amidst a welter of evidence and allegations, the elusive truth about the scandalous saga of the implosion of Rangers (1872/73) and the emergence and ultimate status, both legal and notional, of the Scottish Third Division club currently styled “The Rangers Football Club” continues, with intriguing bubbles of controversy surfacing all the while … even as the forensic scalpels of HMRC and the imminent Liquidator, BDO, are readied for the autopsy.  It is fervently to be hoped that progress and conclusion will be much speedier and less convoluted than the Hillsborough apocalypse was and still is; but no-one should labour under the illusion that final resolution will be either swift or clean.  Nor is it likely ever to attain the almost universal level of collective acceptance that has settled on the Sheffield tragedy – determined stubbornness and tribal myopia are almost certain to preclude the kind of objectivity required for such consensus, no matter the final outcome.

What, then, can the fabled “neutral observer” hope to see in the end?

1.  As much truth as can be discerned through the near-impenetrable fog of war.

2.  As much justice and subsequent punishment (as opposed to consequences) as can be wrung from the tortuous processes of the law and financial / fiscal regulation.

3.  Perhaps the odd delicious, or (depending upon your particular standpoint), unpalatable surprise, as the inevitable cross-references emerge, connections are established, electronic and / or paper trails followed, etc.

Just let your mind drift a while and think of some of the tantalising possibilities …

Johnbhoy