why doesnt my phone switch off. it just sticks on the closing down page?

Why doesn't my phone switch off. It just sticks on the closing down page and I have to take the battery out to turn off.

This can sometime be a problem with the SD card.  If you have set the phone to backup settings on shutdown then this can stop if there is a problem with the SD card.

Try turning off the automatic backup, Menu --> Settings --> Privacy --> Backup my data

If you are running 2.2 this option is not available.

You can search for Privacy but first you may have to do the following
Menu --> Setting --> Search --> Searchable items then put a tick next to Settings
Then back on the Home page click on the search button, right most button at the bottom of the phone.  Type in Privacy and scroll down until you find the right one, should have the green cog next to it.  You will then be able to turn off the automatic back up.

My phone was doing that too. I thought it had shut down and in the middle of the night emails were still coming through. I tried the following and it has shut down straight away since. I had the screen time out set to 1 minute. I changed it to 10 minutes and the phone has shut down straight away every since. It seems that the time out was stopping the shut down being able to complete properly. (I now make sure that I manually set the time out by tapping the off button on the top of the phone to save battery life).

My screen time out is set to 1 minute and I do not have a problem.  But if it works for you then great.

But then I am also running 2.2 so it maybe that.

Sounds like it is a bug with 2.1 that appears, at least in my case, to have been fixed with 2.2.

Hopefully you will get 2.2 soon and then will be able to set the time out back to 1 minute.