The server team asked me to write a blog post to ask for help removing the use of "multiuser" as an argument to update-rc.d. This used to be the way that we sped up the shutdown time a little, but we've changed the approach now.
This is great, as it means that we can get rid of some of our diff to Debian, as well as helping Debian to get the improvements (the original approach was never accepted by Debian, the new one has been).
However, I no longer need to write the post. Thanks to a few people most of the work has now been done. In particular I would like to thank Didier Roche, Nicolas Valcarcel, and Cesare Tirabassi, as well as the sponsors that uploaded their work when needed.
However, I thought I'd write the post anyway, as there is still loads of work to do, so if you are interested in helping out with development then come and get stuck in. I'll try and post about some specific tasks in the future, hopefully before somebody does all of the work next time.
-- This belongs to Lionel Richie