I just wonder if anyone knows why the panel scaling (or contents of) has been so bad for so long in KDE?

In particular, the way the system tray icons resize themselves on thinner panels, the way the clock just looks a bit of a mess on thinner panels (not centred, odd font size).
If I have a vertical panel, the main menu will jump to a completely different size to all other panel icons.
The main menu in particular scales very badly on thinner panels and looks very fuzzy or blurry.

I'm a big fan of KDE in general but I just don't understand how these issues have been there for a long time now in a DE that seems to pride itself on it's beauty?
I was hoping the latest 4.8 update might have finally fixed some of these issues but unfortunately not

The sizing and positioning of elements are controlled by the underlying Qt technology which Plasma was built on: QGraphicsView. Unfortunately, the QGraphicsView layouting system has some problems, which are what you are seeing here I believe.

However, some of the System Tray icon sizings may be due to deliberate policy - as it may be better to stack the icons in the System Tray with certain height panels. Unfortunately, some are also technological limitations - system tray icons using the older X based system tray technology are hardcoded to 48x48, as part of the specification which Plasma has no influence over.

The positioning issues with the clock could be related to layouts most certainly however.