But again, poorly conceived spending reductions often do more harm than good.
Women who've been struggling to conceive often spend the night here, having heard of the miraculous results the saint can deliver through a blessing known as a 'wang'wang
I essentially agree, ruinously, with the novelist Jim Harrison, who wrote that "whereas five hundred bucks seems reasonable for a great meal, I would not conceive of spending that much for an article of clothing or footwear".
To you, the privileged who were able to conceive without having to spend a fortune, my suggestion is to start asking how you can help those who haven't had it as easy, what are the right and, perhaps, less right things you can say and again, take a few precious seconds to listen instead of suggest.
That is no less damning a criticism, reflecting the toll on the alliance's fighting capability of inadequate or poorly conceived defence spending by too many of its members (see table).
Honestly, can anyone conceive of the Boss spending his days watching "Dr. Phil," then heading to the early-bird dinner at Applebee's?
Or maybe we are just in a time when concert halls are conceived for people who spend too much time injecting music from their iPods directly into their ear canals.
Julia Carrick, who conceived the How to Spend It magazine and was its publisher until 2015, told me: "Some of the issues were way over £1m in profit". At its current publication rate, a conservative estimate of How to Spend It's annual profits would be above £10m.
It's the encroachment on the time that he usually spends conceiving and refining alternative universes, that bothers Pratchett, who reckons that the time he has spent publicising Alzheimer's has cost him "half a book".
Prior to conceiving Tubeway he spent time with groups on the British Legion circuit, and four or five months in Meanstreet, who appeared on the lamentable Live At The Vortex album – by which time Numan had been thrown out.
