Billy - you don't seem to have noticed that most of the hereditary peers got kicked out of the House of Lords, over a year ago. The ones who are left with voting rights were voted for by their own then peers, or were nominated as Life Peers by the leaders of political parties (Tony's cronies, MPs kicked upstairs, that sort of thing). There's an argument going on (though not very vocally at the moment) about how you could fill the House of Lords with elected representatives without undermining the authority of the House of Commons.

Republics have their own problems about separation of powers and which elected arm should have priority over another elected arm. At least the UK has a rule that the elected House of Commons wins over the House of Lords if they wait for long enough. The Queen just signs the Act after it's been passed by Parliament. OK so the monarch sometimes has to make a decision when there's no Prime Minister or Parliament in session, but not very often (and the Lord Home incident was 40 years ago). There's something to be said for keeping a hereditary monarchy with members bred to wave at crowds and cut the ceremonial ribbons.