Stealing from little Peter to make big Paul smug

Jack Marx discovers the problem has gone beyond giving away someone else's present by smugly buying a goat for an African farmer instead:

Up and running as both a Facebook page and an online petition is a movement dedicated to pressuring the Government to cancel this year's Australia Day fireworks so as to "direct the allocated funds to victims of the 2011 floods". So now it's come to this; not content with having bullied and emotionally blackmailed each other out of our disposable cash, we are now flogging off the experiences of each other's children in an effort to make ourselves feel – and look – better. What junkies for conspicuous altruism we are!