Could we just get this done so we can get on with keeping schools open?

A reader actually phoned the business desk to warn that he was reaching the end of his tether and I had to tell him I agreed.

There is nothing more frustrating than watching this province fall apart while the people who are supposed - at the very least to be holding it together - accept our money to make it worse.

Everwhere you look there are businesses, for which read a lot of people working together in a common endeavour, who are worrying about the health of their parents and panicking that their children’s school is about to start laying off teachers.

In the past two weeks, more than two and a half thousand new jobs have been announced in the Irish Republic - not to mention the money and jobs within the financial sector that are shifting to Dublin as a result of Brexit.

Add to that claims in the Irish Times that a number of NI businesses have put workers on ‘protective notice’ as they prepare for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit and it’s clear that this whole mess is taking an increasingly unpleasant turn.

No wonder, then, that Petra Wolsey who works alongside husband Bill running the Beannchor hotel and hospitality group lost it this week as he pointed out a few home truths.

“The vast majority of people in this country are fed up with the politicians,” he told the BBC, letting looses at the two main parties and their leaders.

“We have replaced the men of violence with the women of intransigence. That’s not what we voted for.”

The DUP stayed silent but Sinn Fein immediately grasped the main issue at stake and accused him of sexism.

“Am I having a moment?” Petra Wolsey asked later on social media, quite clearly experiencing exactly that.

“Fess up,” she told both parties.

“What really stings is the truth of how monumentally ineffectual both your parties are for the people of NI.”