I only vaguely noticed some of the early articles and then went to look after my mother and after went to live in Hungary.

Last week I was absolutely enraged by Mr Bates vs the Post Office, not because I had any connection with the scandal or knew anything, but because it's clear that nobody with the power to do something actually gave a shit and still, even now, they don't give a shit. The Post Office was wetting itself about word getting out about the computers not working and so scapegoated the subpostmasters to distract from the crap software. Fujitsu was wetting itself in case it lost money. They also scapegoated the subpostmasters.

I was trying to work out why I was so angry when I didn't know anybody involved. Yes, the injustice. The massive corporation against one person. The reiterated lie: "You're the only one." Yes, the cruelty and the glacial pace.

But also subpostmasters are a particularly British group of people and this held good throughout the drama: quiet, honest, co-operative, community-minded. What we think of when we say "decent people."

In a way, the flower of the country, the people you'd point to if you wanted to make that kind of Britishness clear to a foreigner.

And they were treated like shit, lied to, prosecuted, imprisoned, lied to again.

However there is another characteristic of the subpostmasters and a lot of people like them: they are quietly, stubbornly bloody-minded.

That's a very good thing.