Yet they've been portrayed as sudden decisions taken on the instruction of trade union barons, cynical attempts to climb on passing bandwagons, or feeble efforts to deflect attention from the government's perceived successes.
Children with congenital heart defects are more than just cute kids "rocking their scar" once a year in a feeble attempt to attract public attention to their diagnosis.
Had they gone, it would have turned out as she predicted: the man was old and feeble, with children who'd compelled his attention long before Robby and Jewel were born.
In Snuff it is the goblins who are the centre of attention: they are a dim, feeble collection of creatures who smell very bad and live in a mess in dark holes, stealing chickens and other things.
Andrews and Thomson see depression as a way of bolstering our feeble analytical skills, making it easier to pay continuous attention to a difficult dilemma.
Or, maybe he just doesn't care, and has long since turned his attention to projects more interesting than nurturing our feeble destinies.
But the game, though played by clumsy midgets under the feeble glow of the arc lights, began to tug at my attention, and I loitered in the runway until it was over.
The committee's conclusion that Miller "did not pay as close attention to the rules of the house as she should" seems remarkably feeble.
One that caught my attention was their Directory Manager, which extends the usefulness of the relatively feeble contact manager in Google Apps.
So far, the weighty problems facing Mexico — the drug war, feeble job growth, persistent poverty and the failings of the police and judicial system — have received little attention and generated only vague pronouncements.
