Assuming the goods or work is satisfactory, I pay my suppliers on the day I receive their invoice. I pay them online so they get the money the same day.

Apparently, in Estonia this is normal business practice. In the UK, however, there is a culture of late payments.

(All my current clients pay promptly. This is not a rant about anyone I work with now. Just so we’re clear about that!)

Back when I was a freelance journalist - the media industry’s equivalent of a battered wife - most of my clients took 90+ days to pay me. Several never paid me at all.

I was just paying a contractor a few minutes ago and it made me think about what late payments actually say about a company. I reckon it means one of four things:

• We’re teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
• Our finance department is staffed by monkey descendents of George Bush.
• We left our wallet in a parallel universe.
• We’re so mean that we’d rather stiff a freelancer for a few points of interest.

To be sure, they’re not doing it for hugs and puppies. So why do editors think it’s perfectly okay to pay a writer months and months after they write something? You can guarantee that they’d they’d complain bitterly if they got their salary a day late.

There is one simple antidote: MoneyClaim.gov.uk. There’s nothing like a county court summons to concentrate the mind of a finance director. Freelance journalists of the world, sue! You have nothing to lose but shitty clients.