A casual observer might surmise that secretary of shire James Brokenstate was not fully plugged in to the extent of the political car crash that is unfolding on his watch.
For example, last week he said Northern Ireland was on a "glide path to greater and greater UK government intervention".
"Glide path" was an interesting turn of phrase. I've never had the pleasure of flying in a glider, but I've always fancied that it would be smooth and peaceful up there, floating effortlessly on the thermals.
It might even be described as an elegant and exciting way to travel - Steve McQueen flew a glider in The Thomas Crown Affair, for goodness sake.
It is therefore a struggle to reconcile Mr Brokenstate's gilding of the glider with the way we are lurching towards the "greater and greater UK government intervention" of which he spoke.
Rather, we are thumping towards direct rule with all the comportment of a wardrobe that has been pushed down a very long, very steep flight of stairs. It is, in fact, the very opposite of a glide path, unless the glider in question has no wings.
Whether or not it is Mr Brokenstate's job to throw himself in front of the wardrobe and stop it from becoming fuel for an Renewable Heat Incentive boiler is another question.
He isn't the one pushing it down the stairs, either. That's the one thing that the DUP and Sinn Féin are managing to cooperate on, though they disagree on whether it is an Irish language act or Dublin government input that they don't want to let out of the wardrobe.
Another tell-tale that the DUP and Sinn Féin have basically given up on restoring Stormont is their shift from behaving like people with a semblance of executive responsibility to full-on opposition mode, as if government was nothing to do with them either in the past or future.
Having decisively revealed themselves to decidedly not being huge fans of that whole decision-making thing on any of the big and difficult issues facing health, education and infrastructure when they were in government, they are now complaining about the decisiveness of a civil servant while they themselves are in self-imposed exile from government.
In denouncing a permanent secretary's decision to make a decision - deciding to enact a planning tribunal decision that a huge incinerator could be built in Newtownabbey - they show an almost admirable deafness to what most people were shouting at their newspapers or televisions: the only reason unelected civil servants are having to make decisions is because the politicians elected to do precisely that have decided that they won't. That's decisiveness for you...
Another disingenuous aspect of the political opposition to the Newtownabbey incinerator is the fact that the proposal comes from an organisation called Arc21.
It is a waste management group for six councils, with a 'joint committee' comprised of councillors from the parties who have voiced opposition to the incinerator.
It's not entirely clear where Sinn Féin and the DUP would prefer to put the incinerator that Arc21 wants to build, nor indeed what the point is of a joint committee of politicians from those parties if other politicians from the self-same parties are simply going to oppose it.
Some people might complain that the politicians are trying to ride two horses...
Another casualty of this tragicomic descent towards direct rule is budget-dodging former finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir.
Who can fail to have been moved by his almost childlike bewilderment that the RHI inquiry will not begin oral hearings until November, "a month later than planned"?
The delay was "disappointing but it is also understandable", he said, perhaps much like Sinn Féin's own indecision about whether there should be an inquiry in the first place as it pondered whether or not to collapse Stormont in January.
Mr Ó Muilleoir neglected to revisit his confident assertion at the time that Sir Patrick Coghlin could "if pressed" report within six months, as well as the fact that he put no cost controls on the inquiry into a botched scheme which itself had no cost controls...
From here on, we can expect more and more hand-wringing from the politicians and the attempt to construct the general impression that any budget cuts - where did that DUP/Tory cash go? - or newly-presented problems in the health service, schools or elsewhere are nothing to do with them.
What else should we expect from a political class that has repeatedly shown itself incapable of taking responsibility? It is always their fault, not ours, after all.
There is a sad irony in the fact that, with our power-sharing structures on the brink of failure, this week is also Community Relations and Cultural Awareness Week.
When Arlene Foster can switch from saying that unionists have nothing to fear from the Irish language to claiming that it is also being used to humiliate them, and Sinn Féin do nothing to assuage genuine unionist concerns, you really have to wonder how serious they are about community relations and cultural awareness.
Whether it is gliding, sliding or crashing, the shift to direct rule won't be pleasant.
