GP Taylor: Victims of Pakistan's floods disaster need all the compassion we can give

If you are going to get the eyes of the world to look at you and give millions, then you have to do it well. A surging wall of water 20 feet high with many western victims – that or a devastating earthquake with broken buildings, broken bones and vivid eyewitness accounts.

Whatever it is, it has to be big, spectacular and make good TV. It has to get us on the edge of our seats and make us feel lucky to be alive. Bono sang it wonderfully when he said "and tonight thank God it's them instead of you". They were words that encouraged us to give.

Who can forget the harrowing images of starving children in Africa that prompted Live Aid? Everyone can remember a profane Bob Geldof demanding money for the sake of starving children. It became a seminal event in the history of our planet, a world united in helping those who couldn't help themselves.

Since then, disasters have come and gone. Tidal waves have brought havoc, bush fires have ravaged many parts of the world and earthquakes have decimated cities around the globe. Each time many people have given generously, after all, what else could we do?

However, it does seem that things have changed. One disaster in a far away land has left us quite lacklustre.

When the monsoon rains came to Pakistan, a slow, creeping, watery death lurked in the land of the Punjab. It wasn't spectacular or even unexpected. Flooding comes to this country every year. Yet, this time it was greater than anyone could have expected.

Many people have died, millions are affected, children face the prospect of starvation and disease and as a news item it is already relegated to being well below the child of an overpaid TV presenter failing to get into university.

It has to be said that August is not a good time to have a natural disaster. National journalists are in their holiday homes in Devon or Dorset standing by the Aga and drinking their chardonnay.

Work and the worries of the world have been left behind in London and their only concern is how to avoid being relocated to Manchester. For those of us who have heard of the disaster, our minds are elsewhere. It has been advocated that the summer is not a time we think of others. It is our time, for us to recharge our batteries and enjoy that long awaited holiday. Disasters, are not a respecter of time, they come like a thief in the night.

The disaster in the Punjab is worse than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined, but the aid for those disasters came at a more rapid pace. People were thinking of giving as they came just after Christmas the season of goodwill. The disaster in Haiti

led to pledges nearing $1bn within the first 10 days. Around 100m of that came from the UK alone. So far, we have given only 29m to the flooding in Pakistan.

Perhaps that is the problem. Pakistan is not a good place to have a disaster. David Cameron pontificated that this country had an export of terror. It was a leaking sieve that allowed terrorists to be trained within its borders and then come and blow up our buses and trains. A country that can afford nuclear weapons, extensive foreign holidays for its President and yet there doesn't seem to be enough money for urgent flood defences or the feeding of starving children.

Many people in the UK feel that the government of Pakistan is corrupt. There is a fear that any money given could end up in the wrong hands. The vicious earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 prompted Britons to happily give more than 20m in donations.

Sadly, a lot of that money was misappropriated just like much of the cash given by the World Bank to the Pakistani government to build flood defences. One of the things that help us to give is knowing, or hoping that our money will be used wisely and not end up in the bank account of some petty official.

As I speak to people about this, I get the feeling that there is real compassion fatigue. Money is tight and we are being told that things won't get any better. In the same breath, we are then asked to help another country that has often misused the money we have already given to it. "When are they going to start helping themselves? They complain about Britain and our foreign policy and then come running to us when it all goes wrong," one person answered me.

Perhaps they have a point. Despite what we may think and despite the double standards of Pakistan in its "war on terror", we still have to give. Children with no water to drink, covered in flies and starving deserve to be helped. They are the innocent victims of this disaster. It may not make good TV news, the flood may not be spectacular but it is still killing many people and destroying lives.

If we don't help, then there are others who will do so for quite

sinister reasons.

GP Taylor is an author and broadcaster from Scarborough. His latest book, The Vampyre Labyrinth, a dark thriller set in Whitby, is out soon.