The resignation of Martin McGuinness comes at a time when the public has had just about all they can take of the wasteful excesses of a barely functioning Stormont.
Since the elections of May last year, the people of the north have had their hopes, dreams and aspirations thumped out of them one political scandal and petty sham fight at a time.
At the back end of November last year, in a joint platform piece by Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster they told you - the readers of this paper - that "Day by day, slowly but surely, politics here is changing. And it's for the better".
November - that's just two months ago - and not only have politics not changed for the better, but day by day they've got increasingly worse.
We now have no functioning assembly and are looking into the mouth of fresh elections.
Less than a year after the last time voters trekked to the polls, and with the British prime minister preparing to trigger Article 50, the north is in the middle of yet another major crisis.
There has been no agreed budget for the year ahead, the health service is stretched to within an inch of its existence, welfare cuts will see the poor get considerably poorer and as for the half a billion RHI scandal that caused this current meltdown - well there'll be no inquiry into that any time soon.
Victims of church and state abuse, decent people who I have got to know well from years of covering their campaign, are left in limbo, with a package of help they were promised now in doubt with no executive in place to approve it.
The families of Troubles victims, given new hope with the Fresh Start, have yet again been let down and those injured as a result of conflict are still waiting on the pensions they were promised.
It's a bleak and depressing situation and one that is hard to see a way out of.
While the speed and manner of Martin McGuinness's resignation surprised many, his hardline stance will play out well among the party supporters.
Voters who were promised parity of esteem and an island of equals, were and are increasingly disillusioned with how the two party coalition was working - or not working - for the nationalist community.
The petty nature of the DUP in dealing with issues such as legacy and the Irish language act had enraged many.
Rather than a two party equal coalition with both McGuinness and Foster holding equal power, the assembly had started to operate like a one party dictatorship, with Sinn Féin Cinderella to Arlene Foster's wicked stepmother.
Sinn Féin enjoyed rapid electoral success throughout the 90s and post Good Friday Agreement by convincing their supporters that the days of being discriminated against were over, that jobs, housing and access to decent education would be rights not privileges for the chosen few.
Republicans have long memories and the first, short lived power sharing government, established in 1974 between Brian Faulkner and Gerry Fitt, with the SDLP accused of settling for the crumbs from the table of big house unionism.
The Belfast Media Group, a media organisation which Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir is still registered as director, carried a story last week about how usage at a north Belfast based food bank has increased by 43 per cent from 2015.
People queuing at Christmas for food donations to feed their families at a time when wealthy farmers and business owners are heating empty sheds to make a profit from a DUP-passed scheme.
What kind of equality is that?
Martin McGuinness travelled from Derry to Stormont resign on Monday despite his obvious frailty. That alone should be an example of the strength of feeling within the party that something had to give.
This crisis will be resolved as all previous crises have, either through new talks or a fresh election, but to be sustainable it needs to resolve the underlying tensions and historic failure to recognise both traditions.
Concentrating on real, respectful politics and not egos and historic differences is what is needed to find a way forward.
