CE can be decent value and personally I'm not that fussed aout adherence to SOP's if the overall quality of service is good. My beef with BA these days is the overall deterioration (whilst accepting the need to remain competitive) and sheer level of inconsistency.
For example: there are too many mediocre crew- never awful in my experience, but far fewer outstanding experiences than a few years ago; customer/cut and paste services has become a joke, whereas it used to be a strong point; and then there are things like the OP described. Is my life going to end if I do not have a separate bus to the plane? No. It's a minor thing. But it's these small things that we need to hold on to as CE passengers, otherwise there really is no difference at all between CE and ET. How hard is it to consistently ensure CE and premium pax have a separate bus? You might tell me it's very hard- but my gut feel is that it should be do-able. Short and medium band catering is poor. Again, a relatively small improvement in that department would make me disproportionately happy. In this long list of first world problems, it's those little and subtle things that do make a difference and more often than not BA seems to fall short of late. There are times when I really enjoy CE and I actually think that with a bit of consistency, improved catering and the right price, it's a good product.