Problem with speech dispatcher
You don't need to uninstall/remove the speech-dispatcher to achieve a proper shutdown. Just remove it from automatic start/stop at the time of system boot/shutdown.
Use the command:
sudo update-rc.d -f speech-dispatcher remove
Unless you need speech-dispatcher, you can just disable it. I installed Boot-up-manager:
sudo apt-get install bum
..and then I disabled speech-dispatcher:
