I think reasonable people can disagree on this.

The fact that new appointments are made either by a democratically elected official (the PM) or else by an expert commission is I think relevant, and softens (though certainly does not remove) the charge of lack of democratic accountability. (The Clegg reform would not have helped much there either, as members were to be elected for non-renewable terms; you could vote them in, but not out.)

The by-elections for hereditary peers, however, are genuinely scandalous in democratic principle, even by the low standards of British constitutional practice, and IMHO the article is right to draw attention to them.

Personally I disagree with both points of view. To me, by far the most ludicrous bit of current House of Lords arrangements is the presence of 26 Church of England bishops in the chamber, and one of the many flaws of the Clegg reform was that it would have increased the percentage of Lords Spiritual in the total number.

It will be interesting to see how the Irish debate goes. Political parties who promised to vote for the abolition of the Senate in the last election are now backtracking in the face of intimidation from their own Senators; but I suspect that the electorate will deliver a pretty firm answer when asked if they would like to cut the number of salaried national parliamentarians by 30%.