The Government has announced a rebranding of the foreign aid swindle in order to try and justify it to an increasingly sceptical public who see their tax money taken away from essential services in Britain and dished out to an increasingly ungrateful Third World.

According to a White Paper to be released tomorrow by Secretary of State Douglas Alexander, overseas aid is to be rebranded in a bid to “help maintain support for spending during the downturn.”

Apparently the Department for International Development (DFID) will from now on use the name “UKaid” for its funding of projects.

The name change was suggested in an earlier report from the House of Commons International Development Select Committee. The change to a new name would heighten awareness of DFID’s work among voters in the UK and aid recipients overseas, said the cross-party committee.

According to the Select Committee’s report, 54 percent of people questioned in the UK had never heard of DFID. To make matters worse, the report said, Africans in Kenya benefiting from one of the department’s projects told the MPs they did not even know what DFID was or where it came from.

The latest handouts to the Third World, courtesy of the British taxpayer, include 30 million bed nets, the development of new treatments and new funding to increase access to anti-malarial drugs, according to the DFID website.

This includes £19 million from 2010 to the Medicines for Malaria Venture to support the development of new drugs and further financial support for the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFM) pilot which subsidises medicines across the world to the tune of £40 million.

The DFID has also announced that it is giving an unnamed amount of cash to sponsor a back patting ceremony called the “Guardian Achievements in International Development Award.”

This weird waste of money idea is the product of the extremist leftist Guardian newspaper and international abortion clinic provider Marie Stopes. The award will, according to the announcement, “celebrate the work of individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to alleviating poverty in the developing world.”

The winner of the award, no matter where in the world he or she might be, will be flown to London, wined and dined and given the unspecified reward, all courtesy of the British taxpayer.

* Meanwhile, unemployment increases across Britain and new cuts in spending on social services here are inevitable due to the recession.