While I understand what you're trying to get at by pointing out the lack of democratic "accountability" (har har har) implicit in positions in the House of Lords, it's also important to remember that members of the House Of Commons have a certain tendency of pushing measures that weren't on their manifesto and which are manifestly against what the electorate actually wants (see Theresa May and the damn Snooper's Charter for example). So it's not quite as simple as saying "Oh those damn toffs in the House Of Lords, interfering with democracy again", because on numerous occasions the HoL has been the only effective barrier to barmy ideas that an interested party has managed to push past the HoC...
As for the argument that cost models should reflect usage/consumption ...well, that's effectively the old "Democracy gets you beer and pizza for dinner every night" argument, or "The public interest doesn't necessarily equate to what the public is interested in" to put it another way. I don't see any other funding model allowing the BBC to remain valuable and useful (IMO) in its current form.
Hell, just look at streaming services in the UK. If the Beeb hadn't been able to roll out iPlayer despite whingeing from ISPs keen to get paid yet again for services that they already get paid for, I doubt we'd have seen any other broadcasters bother with streaming catchup services or Netflix & Amazon rolling out the on-demand offerings.
Having said that, the changes to cover iPlayer access etc are going to be very interesting - presumably this means they'll move away from the ridiculous "only if it's plugged into the mains" clause they used to have (otherwise employers and anyone else providing public wifi access can look forward to an even more fun time trying to deal with it).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
