And also get rid of the pointless 'spacers' before and after the toolbar. I've made changes to the item view but obviously these will be lost after an update.

I'm sorry Sean, can you please provide screenshot of that toolbar, as it is difficult to understand what you're referring to.

When creating a newsfeed post you can assign toobar items to the post. Pic attached. I've obviously changed mine with css.

The toolbar is the blue button.

This is the code in feed_item.html

 {if !empty($item.toolbar)}            {strip}        <div class="ow_newsfeed_toolbar ow_small ow_remark clearfix">            <span class="ow_newsfeed_toolbar_space">&nbsp;</span>
           {foreach from=$item.toolbar item=toolbarItem}                    <span class="ow_newsfeed_control ow_nowrap {if !empty($toolbarItem.class)}{$toolbarItem.class}{/if}">                        {if !empty($toolbarItem.href)}                            <a href="{$toolbarItem.href}">{$toolbarItem.label}</a>                        {else}                            {$toolbarItem.label}                        {/if}                        <span class="ow_newsfeed_toolbar_space">&nbsp;</span>                    </span>                {/foreach}        </div>    {/strip}            {/if}

Can we get rid of the '&nbsp' bits and add in an ID field? It will just tidy things up a bit

Sean you can make a suggestion on uservoice: http://oxwall.uservoice.com/forums/13756-ideas-for-oxwall

Seriously? 

I need to go through the hassle of waiting for it to get cotes just to add and remove a few lines of html? 

Joke.