by Reddy » Sun May 31, 2015 12:51 pm
First of all, an unelected/ partially unelected upper house is not as uncommon as most Britons, in my experience, believe it is. Second you ought to be more worried about the Privy Council rather than the House of Lords. The Privy Council can pass delegated legislation with no checks, while the Lords only has a suspensive veto at most, meaning that the Commons can override any legislative objection by the Lords.
I like the House of lords actually. It tends to have more serious and classy debates and some if not most of the members are independent minded technocrats, not just 'whipped' party hacks with Art History (or something similarly pointless IMO) degrees that you often find in the Commons. Thus it serves as a constitutional check on the Commons where destructive populism is more likely to possess many members (think the HRA) The Lords are not perfect, certainly the membership could be cut down in size by three quarters or so and it could be made more representative of the four countries.
To live outside the law, you must be honest.