Politicians across Europe are ever eager to criticise the culture of late trade payment by corporations and the devastating impact it can have on small business in particular. It's a bit ironic then that EU ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros felt obliged to launch an investigation into late payments by the European Commission itself, following a number of complaints from frustrated contractors.His investigation, set up in late December 2007, called on the EU executive to send its opinion on what's going wrong by March latest. No news yet on the outcome, but I'm sure we'll hear that the EC has examined its internal procedures and has taken steps to ensure that delays are kept to a minimum.......................sound familiar?