A "country membership" category is long overdue. If the Club wishes to retain the membership of retiring members and encourage those "oop north" and us "out west" to pop in occasionally I am sure that apart from the principle of the matter the trustees could come up with such a scheme.
How would you define 'country membership' limits though? Even if you said '100 miles from London' (or whatever), there'll always be someone living 99.9 miles away who would be disadvantaged by such a ruling.
Nevertheless, the Club must not become a 'London-centric' institution.
(But do we
really want to encourage FNMs to come up to Town?
)