The unemployment rate in Britain has officially hit 2.4 million while the Government continues with its foreign aid spending spree, giving £75 million to Bangladesh to “fight climate change;” £8.2 million to help “schoolchildren, community and faith groups  to understand poverty in the developing world,” and £3 million to “Sri Lankans forced to flee their homes during recent fighting.”

In Britain the number of unemployed has risen by a record amount to 2.38 million, leaving 10 percent of the population out of work in some areas of the country. Nearly 3,300 British workers are losing their jobs every day.

This leaves the total number out of work at a 14-year high. Analysts suggest that the unemployment rate will continue to rise, peaking at 3.2 million next year.

Some regions are already suffering particularly badly, with the West Midlands having a jobless rate of 10.3 percent, according to the Office for National Statistics. Projected cuts in public spending will also start biting next year, particularly in cities with high public sector employment such as Swansea, Newcastle and Ipswich. According to independent urban policy research unit Centre for Cities, at least 290,000 posts would be cut by 2014.

Meanwhile, the Department for International Development (DFID) announced on Monday that it had “launched a major action plan to protect 15 million of the world’s poorest people from the devastating impact of climate change.”

A press release from the DFID said that the “UK’s country plan will protect people’s lives and livelihoods against more frequent natural disasters” and that the £75 million plan will include building raised houses for people in Bangladesh who are silly enough to live in flood plains, the building of roads in that country and storm shelters “built and equipped to offer men, women and children somewhere to go when cyclones hit.”

The £75 million is in addition to the £50 million already given to the ‘Chars Livelihood Programme’, which will help one million people who live on river islands in the Jamuna River raise their homes above the flood level, the DFID press release boasted. “Our work has already helped more than 300,000 raise their homes and has provided livestock, seeds and other items to almost 50,000 families in this low-lying, flood-prone area.”

On 8 July, the DFID proudly announced that it was giving away another £8.2 million to a “campaign against ‘fast fashion’, a project teaching UK schoolchildren the true cost of blood diamonds and a group using Brazilian martial arts to educate inner-city kids about global poverty.”

The money, provided in terms of the DFID’s ‘Development Awareness Fund’ will “back at least 30 new projects across the UK designed to help more people — from schoolchildren to community and faith groups — to understand poverty in the developing world and how they can join the fight against it.”

According to their press release, these will include a “project informing Asian youths in London and East Midlands about the effect cheap, disposable clothing — ‘fast fashion’ — has on the environment and workers in the developing world; a website and programme of classes and workshops for schoolchildren to raise awareness of the damage done by the global trade in diamonds, gold and other valuable commodities; and using capoeira, a Brazilian art-form mixing dance and martial arts, to teach schoolchildren in Hackney and other UK cities about global development.”

Finally, the DFID announced on 14 July that it was giving a further £3 million to “284,000 Sri Lankans who were forced to flee their homes during the recent fighting” in that country.

Meanwhile, British people can join the unemployment lines.