Jeez.
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Fragment of a discussion from Comments:Thousands take to streets protesting 'ratbag's Bedroom Tax
When reviewing the article, that struck me as simply an attention-grabber, descriptive of the protest. I understand your position, and certainly wouldn't have objected had the reporter chosen to title it as you suggest, but the headline doesn't strike me as implying a POV.
We did have problems with the punctuation in the headline. The word "ratbag" is a direct quote, so should be in double quotes in the article, single quotes in the headline, but it's not clear how best to form the possessive form of a single-quoted word. So we put the word in its single-quotes and then let the closing single-quote merge with the possessive apostrophe.