Why is foreign aid an easy target?

UKIP and the Daily Mail have recently started a campaign to force the government to divert funds currently being used for foreign aid to pay for damages caused by the horrific floods that have devastated our country in recent months, but why is foreign aid seemingly the first to be sent towards the firing squad? The Guardian recently posed this exact question in a comments article I thought it justified a small response.

Whilst searching for information on the floods and opinions on the governments handling of the disaster on social media I came across multiple opinions on why foreign aid should be diverted to pay for the cost of repairing infrastructure and housing and I shall respond to some of the most common arguments I saw posted. Foreign Aid is often attacked by self-confessed nationalists as putting foreigners ahead of our own citizens, an attack that is completely nonsensical as it seems to negate the fact that the remaining majority of our budget is spent on our own population, it seems to be nothing more than failed nationalist dogma that quickly falls apart under scrutiny, another attack more commonly seen and supported by a portion of the mainstream media is that money is being spent on countries that don't deserve it, a great example of this being India who currently have a minor space program. The justification for cuts being that if the Indian government can afford a national space program then it can afford for the welfare of its own citizens and whilst that might be true in a perfect world the reality is that British efforts in India have had a visible benefit  to the country and this argument will soon disappear as funding for India is cut in 2015

Lastly one of most misinformative but sadly frequent arguments against foreign aid is that it does not do anything worthwhile. Decades worth of depressing images from the African continent by the mainstream media have given the British public the misconception that nothing has changed when that is opposite from the truth, with everything from infant mortality, malaria infection rates and deaths from preventable illnesses like diarrhoea reduced significantly in recent years thanks to the contribution of foreign aid.  In conclusion misinformation and misguided nationalist rhetoric has led to the call for foreign aid to be scrapped and the mainstream media should address this concern instead of feeding into it, as for funding flood relief efforts? Clamping down on tax avoidance, cutting trident or short-term borrowing would provide the funds without cutting an invaluable service.