Hi Andy -
Thanks for the response, I've been playing around with similar settings to the ones you've suggested, but because some of the lines are of interest for other types of interface (i.e. description XXXXXXX can apply to the static trunk and ethernet interfaces as well as the dynamic Vethernet ones) I can't hit a happy balance between ignoring the "right" amount of config and ignoring pretty much everything in the config 
. To add to the issues, there are some Vethernet interfaces that I am interested in comparing (those used for VMKernel connectivity etc). I might raise a development request for it.
Regards,
John