And while technically the House of Commons can pass just about any law it wants, the House of Lords generally acts as a counterweight to reign in worst of the Commons. Usually if its not in the governments manifesto and the bill gets kicked back to the Commons then by convention its usually kicked into the long grass unless the changes proposed by the Lords are acceptable.

Of course the Commons could invoke the Parliament Act to push through legislation it generally only does so in rare circumstances (a handful over the last century). However any attempt to do this over anything other than a firm manifesto pledge would likely again plunge the UK into said constitutional crisis.

So the checks and balances in the UK system come from the fact none of parties involved wants to deal with the mess that would result if they didn't follow prior convention.

Don't you mean "Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union"?

Funny - in Australia and New Zealand we have Governors General to represent the Queen, and they're also given the final say on whether a law is passed. In New Zealand the people I've talked to have considered it purely ceremonial, but in Australia 1975 that viewpoint was refuted when the governor general dissolved the parliament.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerr_(governor-general) for more.

There is also a Church of Ireland (which was disestablished as the offical religion of Ireland (which was in the UK) in 1870ish), and Church in Wales. Scotland has sorta it's own church (think it's a slight different variant) which it has a right to exist due to the Act of Union of 170x.

So it's all a bit complicated and depending on how you define "UK" and "UKwide"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scotland

NB Although I've always been an atheist, I grew up in a small community in the North of Scotland dominated by the Kirk and it's more zealous offshoots. If you've seen Lars von Triers "Breaking the Waves" then you'll get the idea.... :-)