Queen Elizabeth Gets $3 million Pay Raise
ANDERSON: Queen Elizabeth II is getting a $3 million pay rise. The crown and state, which manages the property portfolio for the British monarch has posted a record profit. So the queen will see an income of about $60 million next year. Royal correspondent Max Foster with the details for you.</s>MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The queen is one of the richest women in the world. Her officials duties and several of her residences are paid for by the British tax payer, which also picks up some of the cost for other members of the royal family. So how is the money paid? Well, she gets a proportion of the income of something known as the Crown Estate. It's a land portfolio originally inherited from earlier generations of monarchs, which now includes an enormous range of properties from offshore wind farms to prime real estate. For example, almost every property on Regent Street here in London. It is one of the premium shopping streets, and also Regents Park here in London. Property values have been booming. So that means the queens income is rising too. But handing the queen a pay rise has proved very controversial at a time when salaries for many people are frozen or even being cut. The anti- monarchy group Republic called for the queen to reject her funding increase whilst most other people in Britain are facing cuts. Now, the royal family says it needs the money to catch up with a back log of repairs at palaces -- Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, for example. Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace, for example, is being renovated for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It's a big home, though, a big project. So so far it's cost around $1.5 million, that renovation work. It's due to completion in the autumn. It won't be done in time for the new royal baby. Now adding travel and other expenses to the equation, for the year up to March, the total cost of the monarchy to the UK taxpayer actually comes to around $47 million. Max Foster, CNN, London.</s>ANDERSON: Well, we asked you on our Facebook page whether you think the queen should accept her pay rise, given these austere times. One of you writing, the 5 percent of her earning increase should go to children in third-world countries. Another view asks, what is her job to earn that sleeping? Another believes she should accept it. People all over the world are feeling the spending cuts and austerity, but that should not allow us to envy the monarchy. The monarchy served its people, too, and needs to be paid. Somebody else writing in, reckons the queen is worth every penny. Her son, however, in my opinion is not worth one pence. To join the conversation, just add to Facebook or certainly head to Facebook and add your comment. Facebook.com/CNNConnect. Let us know what you think. You can tweet me as ever @BeckyCNN. That's @BeckyCNN. Now just on that, of course, but on anything you've got on your mind. The latest world news headlines are just ahead, as you would imagine, the bottom of the hour here on CNN. Plus, two years of war now killed an estimated 100,000 people in Syria. What can be done to finally stop the bloodshed? I'm going to talk with a former peace negotiator for Bosnia who has got some ideas, Lord David Owen. How Kofi Annan is helping young people around the world tackle that growing problem of youth unemployment. You'll hear from him coming up. And there's been another slip-up at Wimbledon, but this time it doesn't involve any of the seeds. Coming up, we're going to speak to a man who knows what it takes to keep the court -- that being the lawn grass courts -- in top condition.