Seeing Smirnoff's post in another thread which suggested "it's quite easy to get Gold status on BA, compared with the equivalent Emerald status on other OW airlines. A typical USA-LHR flight could have dozens of Golds/Emeralds in WT" got me wondering, in a McKinsey interview sort of way:

How many BAEC Gold members are there globally?

I guess that this sort of information wouldn't be published, but if you had to hazard a guess what would it be? 50,000? The obvious supplementary question has to be how many Silver members? I wouldn't even like to hazard a guess at that as you can get that in one return J flight these days (choosing the right flight and membership country!). This thread debated it some years ago but do you think it will have changed with the economy and tighter travel policies?