Breakfast, west London:
Did you know that one ex-MP ended up doing a labouring job with British Steel after losing his seat? No, nor did I. Or that 39 MPs defeated in the Thatcher landslide of 1979 were still without work 18 months later. Yes, I did know that.
Did you also know that MPs and ex-MPs who hail from constituencies far from London resent the trail of would-be MPs from the capital who arrive with the blessing of the party leadership seeking nominations when - or before - vacancies arise?
''Too many Ed Ballses coming from London and pinching our seats,'' one ex-MP told me last night before he explained how local constituencies in the north - Scotland seems to prefer informal ethnic quotas ie all Scots - conspire with their MP as he/she reaches retirement to keep such people at bay.
It was ever thus. But tensions seem greater now. '' We don't want all-women shortlists, we don't want people from London,'' they say. Some add: ''We don't want Asian candidates foisted on us unfairly.''
Not very nice? Elderly talk? Reactionary talk? Well, maybe. But that depends where you're sitting. ''There are MPs here who will deliberately die in harness - and everyone knows it.''
I was reminded of such facts because I took 15 minutes to drop in to a teatime reception in the Strangers Dining Room at Westminster yesterday for ''Life After Losing or Leaving,'' an academic report analysing what actually happens to such people when they step down or get defeated as MPs.
I don't expect you to feel sorry for ex-MPs. Like everyone losing a job they love some adjust and thrive, others grieve for ever. You can find details from Leeds University's website or from the report's author, Professor Kevin Theakston, at the school of politics and international studies. Some exes resent being totally excluded from Westminster, though the rules have been relaxed for recidivists. Best to stay away is my instinct.
Needless to say the room was full of familiar faces, people you vaguely thought might be dead (a bit like the House of Lords), although Edwina Currie - defeated in Derbyshire in Labour's 1997 counter-landslide - was present, very much alive and talkative. She was one of the lucky exes, who made a new career.
Some current MPs who had once lost seats, including deputy speaker, Tory Sir Alan Haselhurst, put in an appearance to show solidarity. Labour ex-MPs Eric Moonman and Joe Ashton, two of the driving forces behind the Association of Former MPs, were busy organising.
Among those taking tea and eating sarnies with no crusts (hurts the gums?) was George Cunningham, who quit Labour for the SDP in 1981 and lost Islington South to Chris Smith in 1983.
A bit of a waste. George was probably the finest parliamentary proceduralist I ever saw at work. When the local NHS closed down a cancer ward to save cash in the late 70s - some things never changed - Cunningham forced a series of procedural votes every afternoon at the start of public business - 3.30pm - until they changed their minds.
Since the Callaghan government had no majority, ministers had to rush to vote. It cost them all an hour a day - but George did not blink. He knew the rule book better than they did. Over the years the two frontbenches conspired to put a stop to such assertions of backbench power via ''modernisation'' and ''family friendly'' hours.
As a result modern troublemakers, the Andrew Mackinlays, Andrew Tyries and Norman Bakers, are greatly circumscribed by the rules - though Labour MPs are much more rebellious than the media credits them with being.
When Dennis Skinner - who helped Cunningham in his NHS rebellion - intervened in yesterday's Commons row over Gordon Brown's use of ''misleading'' in his spat with David Cameron (''it's called experience, it's worth a guinea a bottle'') he was showing a flash of the old Commons. Tory MPs jeered, chiefly because they don't get it. And Skinner was procedurally correct.
How does George feel about things today. ''A lot of things happen now that I don't approve of,'' he says with a chuckle. Not one of those ex-MPs who never recovered, but one who was missed.
The event reminded me of the American politician who lost his seat and was called on to say something at the count. ''The people have spoken,'' he said, paused and added "the bastards".' This was, I think, a joke. But when Steve Pound, the ultra-witty MP, deployed it on the Today programme there were outraged calls. Humour is a foreign language to so many.
The chief executive of Slough council was on the Today programme this morning complaining that government statistics underestimate fast rising populations in areas like hers.
It's an old worry for local authorities whose central government grants are affected badly by such errors. But it is made worse by this week's most remarkable statistical claim, that the population of this country is set to rise to at least 70 million in the next few years.
Well-scrubbed middle class types in expensive neighbourhoods are starting to notice that the primary schools are full - private as well as public - and that others, lately closed, have been flogged off and redeveloped.
That's my part of London, the wealthier west side. My man in Dagenham on the poorer side says that pressure on services - public and private - are much more acute there. Things are far worse than even Jon Cruddas, the outspoken local MP says.
''Lots of decent Labour voters are saying they've been betrayed and they'll be voting BNP next time. BNP economic policies are what Labour's used to be,'' he told me this week. Not nice either, perhaps. But again, it depends where you're sitting.
I've just heard the historian Ken Morgan, defending Lloyd George's place in history against my fellow-scribe, Francis Beckett, whom the Today programme generously describes as an historian too. Morgan wins gracefully.
But he also plants an idea in my head. Taxed about LG's topical habit of flogging peerages, he says they all did it - true. But LG did it because this Welsh Non-Conformist was much more of a '"democrat and a man of the people'' than Beckett's hero, Clem Attlee.
''Lloyd George treated the House of Lords with contempt because he didn't believe in the House of Lords,'' Morgan explained. Could that explain Tony Blair's cavalier attitude towards both reform and the awarding of peerages, I wonder? His distain was well known and he does not plan to take up the ex-PM's option on a seat. It's a thought.
Footnote: After Doris Lessing's rash plunge into the stormy seas of history today's Telegraph carries a letter from fellow-writer Harold Pinter (why do I itch to write ''Dame Harold'' now that he has accepted an honour from the blood-stained British state?) and John Pilger who would definitely refuse a damehood, were one to be proferred. Fellow-Aussie exile Edna Everage already has one!
It deplores today's unveiling of a statue to Lloyd George in Parliament Square, the reason for the Morgan-Beckett debate on Today. Why? Because as British prime minister from 1916-22 he used the new weapon of aerial warfare - they don't explain this, but it's what they mean - to subdue unruly corners of the newly-expanded British empire in the Middle East.
Targets included Iraq and Afghanistan, where bombing continues to this day. The statue is therefore ''highly topical and disgraceful,'' say the pair and Dennis Halliday, who was UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq until he quit.
All fair enough, and broadly true, though it misses a lot of context, not least LG's role in national liberation of many small nations; not to mention his role as a domestic radical and social reformer, which Ken Morgan explained to slow learners.
As for poor Iraq, Baghdad never recovered from the Mongol sacking it received in 1258 and several centuries of rule by the Ottoman Turks did not leave Lloyd George much to build on. Yes, I know he screwed up a great deal, not least from a Kurdish national perspective (it depends where you're sitting again).
But context matters. And even Nelson Mandela, recently unveiled on Parliament Square, wasn't perfect. Still isn't, and he's just the kind of man to admit it.
