Lord elected by peers does not want Lords elected by the public

According to the Daily Telegraph:
Cameron's father-in-law warns Lords reforms could lead to BNP peers

A couple of things struck me about the story...

Firstly, the Telegraph expects everyone to know that the Prime-Minister's father-in-law is actually Viscount Astor, a member of the House of Lords. I am clearly not the target demographic for the newspaper!

Viscount Astor is an elected hereridary peer - one of the 90 members of the House of Lords elected by the hereditary peers. The story could therefore be summarised as:

"Lord elected by peers does not want Lords elected by the public in case the wrong sort of people get in"

I find this a truly undemocratic argument. I profoundly disagree with the BNP (and i'm sure they don't approve of me) but they are a legal political party and if enough misguided people choose to vote for them then they should be elected and then held to account for their performance in office.

The article claims that an elected House of Lords would have a permanent block of Labour and Lib Dem peers that would limit the powers of a future Conservative government. This is the same argument that i have heard used against an English parliament (however in that case the Tories would have a permanent majority). 

Again, if the electorate votes for those parties then that is democracy, however the many people thought that the Scottish and Welsh parliaments would have permanent Labour majorities or Labour-led coalitions but reality hasn't turned out like that!

I believe in democracy and the British electorate, if someone makes laws that affect citizens like me then surely we should be able to vote to choose who those legislators are.