Silver spoons

My most recent trip from San Francisco back to London was my first time flying as a British Airways "Silver" level member.  I got bumped to business class and had a personal greeting from the purser once one the plane.

There's a bunch of random things that come with Silver membership, but the perks I was most interested in are:

• Access to the BA airport lounges (which have good bacon sandwiches)
• Access to the Fast Track passport lines (which are sometimes not so "fast" but can often save a lot of time when trying to get back into the country)

Next stop, Gold.  It doesn't have many more perks I'm interested in, although I've been stymied by how difficult it is to use frequent flier miles on BA to get upgrades (Google only pays for economy class, so I need to snag an upgrade to have any hope of fitting into a seat for 10 hours).  I'm hoping that Gold might address that.