Comment 22 for bug 52405

Yes Matt, unless it has dependencies. To me it's not really an option. Removing menu-xdg would mean to remove:
kcontrol kdelibs4c2a kicker koctave kwave libkonq4 menu-xdg tora

But the problem still exists, and this is what's so troublesome with things like gnome. The problem is that the menu flickers, and the app goes crazy just because a symlink is pointing to outer space. To me, THIS is the bug, and the 'solutions' above are hacks which 'might' work, but it doesn't solve the bug.
It is caused by bad programming, not because of vague packaging. A program 'crashing' because a symlink (which is not required by the program) doesn't exist or doesn't point to a valid file is a badly written program.
In gnome, bugs reappear year after year, and the real problem doesn't get solved (like in gconf/gsd, which is a big jar of bugs).

Btw, it's /etc/xdg/menus/debian-menu.menu, not /etc/xdg/menu/debian-menu.menu