There are certain universal truisms in life, ineluctable facts that brook no dispute, chief among which is that the Establishment will always look after its own.

Thus, as 2015 draws to a close with further exhortations to mass slaughter and carnage, the Brits are still trying to cover up their crimes from 40 years ago.

This week the High Court in London ruled that seven former members of the Parachute Regiment — the original thugs in uniform — would not have to go to Northern Ireland to be interviewed by police over their role in the murderous events of Bloody Sunday.

The argument put forward by lawyers for the paras was that their lives might be in danger if they were to cross the Irish Sea.

Excuse me! These are hired killers we’re talking about here not bloody cub scouts.

It’s a pity they didn’t feel that way in 1972, else 14 innocent people would still be alive, as well as eight civilians murdered in Ballymurphy six months beforehand and countless others down the years.

This column must confess to a vested interest in Bloody Sunday. Not because of its Irish heritage, nor even the fact that it lived and worked in Derry for many years and knows many of the family members of those who were killed, although both are factors.

No, it is because it sat through years of evidence and testimony at the Saville Inquiry and had to listen to these bold warriors perjure themselves shamelessly time and time again with their phoney lack of memory excuses and specious claims of gunmen and nail-bombers while concealing their identity behind ciphers in the cabinet of mendacity, as one lawyer friend of this column dubbed the witness box.

I defy anyone who has more than casually perused the evidence in the case to, in good conscience, draw any conclusion other than that this was cold calculated murder on an industrial scale.

End of story.

The claim that things got out of control in the heat of battle are patently false. First, there was no “battle” because as Lord Saville rightly concluded none of those killed, or anyone else present on that day, had done anything to justify the paras opening fire, let alone killing people.

Second, the fact that six of those killed were 17 years of age cannot be brushed aside as mere coincidence. They were specifically targeted by a unit of shock troops who had been told that all civilians in Derry were either in the IRA or sympathisers and therefore, as far as the authorities were concerned, fair game and to go in and get “kills.”

But from the way the Establishment and its lickspittle lackeys in the press are bleating on you would think these murdering scumbags were the victims, not Patrick Doherty, Gerald Donaghey, Jackie Duddy, Hugh Gilmour, Michael Kelly, Michael McDaid, Kevin McElhinney, Bernard McGuigan, Gerard McKinney, Willie McKinney, William Nash, Jim Wray, John Young and John Johnston.

Or, the much ignored wounded: Michael Bradley, Michael Bridge, Alana Burke, Patrick Campbell, Peggy Deery, Damien Donaghy, Joe Friel, Daniel Gillespie, Joseph Mahon, Pius McCarron, Patrick McDaid, Daniel McGowan, Alex Nash, Paddy O’Donnell and Michael Quinn.

Oh, but it was a long time ago they speciously claim and they’re old men now.

So what? I don’t care how old they are. Their 14 innocent victims would have been old men by now, if they had not had their lives so cruelly and cynically snuffed out.

I don’t give a shit whether the killers have to be dragged before the courts on their hospital beds, they should face justice and take responsibility for what they have done.

But of course they won’t.

Because the real point here is that the paras were only the blunt implement the state used to get the job done when everyone knows the orders came from the very top.

And there is no way in hell the Establishment is going to let that can of worms get opened any further than it already has.

Yes, the paras should be prosecuted and jailed, that is not in question, but so too should every strata of the state from Downing Street downwards.

It’s just a pity Ted Heath’s dead or I’d drag him squirming into the dock too.