(Equally, the continued existence of the leeching monarchy is another question that I'll address at another time).
The House of Lords of the UK (also known as the House of Peers) is the upper house of the Parliament of the UK. The membership of the House is drawn from the peerage and consists of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal (at least 90 of which are hereditary peers). The Lords Spiritual are 26 Bishops from the Church of England. The Lords Temporal are mainly life peers who are supposedly appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister or that of the House of Lords' Appointments Commission. I leave the rest for you to research for yourself and to check out the references I've provided below.
So effectively we have a House of unelected Posh Idiots who serve no purpose whatsoever besides dressing up in archaic regalia whilst claiming ridiculous amounts of expenses at the same time. In an Evening Standard article (referenced below) 17 of such peers were accused of claiming £400K in expenses despite doing minimal work and all are allowed to claim £300 per day for just attending briefly. One such peer left a taxi running outside just so he could pop in and do so (also see below). Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg as they have been involved in many other scandals.
The question I really want to ask is why do the British people not object and allow such an antidemocratic sorry state of affairs to carry on? (Bearing in mind that the average salary of a UK citizen was around £27600 in 2015 and they have to slave all year to earn that, yet these ponces can claim at least £300 per day which equates to £109500 for doing nothing).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41336667
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/house-of-lords-peers-retire-westminster-dining-rooms-step-down-taxpayers-parliament-a8138141.html
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/house-of-lords-in-fresh-expenses-row-after-17-peers-claim-400k-despite-minimal-work-a3666086.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/21/peer-kept-taxi-running-claiming-300-house-lords-allowance/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
http://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/