Any trick in the book

It seems that some people (mainly right-wing hacks) really can't stand the UK meeting its United Nations commitment of making 0.7% of its GDP available as international aid.  If it isn't inappropriate to have such a policy in an austerity era, it's that no-one else does it (Norway is the only other country ever to have reached the target) or we are sending it to countries with space programmes like India.  Their vociferousness is only superseded by their denial of climate change being man-made.  Now the charge is that the aid should be redirected to help flood-hit victims (as mainstream opinion turns against climate change denier quacks).
As David Cameron said, it's not an either/or decision - Britain can afford both.  Indeed, it is quite creative to link flooding to foreign aid contributions.  What other wheezes can be dreamt up by those of a xenophobic hue to deny the less well-off British aid?  A historical football club like Portsmouth FC is struggling to pay off its debts and stay in the football league - a reduction in international aid could stop this!  Cutting the top rate of tax to 40% - who cares about those earning less than a dollar a day, what about those earning more than 200 dollars a day?  HS2 could definitely be built, er, scrap that one; that would alienate much of the middle England readership in whose acres the route will run.
Basically, there will always be economic exigencies that demand the aid budget be siphoned off, in the good times and the bad.  That no-one else (bar Norway) can attain it should be a source of pride for this country, not mean-spirited grousing.  India would push ahead with its space ambitions irrespective of whether segments of its population received much needed British aid.  Attaining the 0.7% target is one of the few unalloyed achievements of the Coalition and maybe that's why there are such determined efforts to undermine it.