GUEST, there are very few hereditary Lords left, with many of the positions being appointed as "life Peers" - many of them through a system of proposal by the parties and acceptance by the monarch; not election as such, and open to misuse, some of which is being investigated right now. So, no quite elected, but neither hereditary. So the rest of your statement is void. Think of them as the Senate in the role they play in the creation of laws. There are lots of procedural differences with the US, but that's more or less the long and short of it.