Originally Posted by
mikebg
On the contrary. It used to be much easier to get Gold, as a "Euro cheat" - by having an address outside the UK.
I think you may overestimate the number of people who are prepared to cheat to get something like BA Gold.
Of course, there are plenty of cheats - you only need to read FT for a bit to detect that - but I would be surprised if either the number or proportion of Golds has decreased since the alignment of thresholds.