I dont think arguing about cd's or books and the like is necessarily a sensible argument as most of these products surely come through just a few publishers/record labels making it fairly obvious that both stores can easily get these things, an Jack might even be right in big stores may have a larger range cos of purchasing power.
However, for groceries Jack you are talking shite.
Yeh a few lines are cheaper. Yeh the veg sometimes lasts longer.
But the cheap lines is cos the big chains have enough clout and purchase power to completely screw the producers, which sucks.
Plus other lines are usually more expensive, as allready pointed out this ends up with the poor paying more for goods than the rich, and the producers are being screwed too.
And yeh of course things last longer when they are irradiated, chemical, GM, synthetic crap so that they last when they travel from a producer, all the way to a distribution hub and then out all the way to a store, causing fuck loads of pollution. And personally I dont trust all the shit going into my body cos of all this.
As for choice, thats bollocks! What choice - pepsi or coke? As an example, Britain used to produce fucking 1000's of variety of apples and now cos of the homogenised purchasing of the big stores (who control the market) most of those producers have been squeezed out of business and those varieties have dissapeared, leaving us with four or five varieties - great choice!
Also, what are some people talking about funny shaped veg or veg with mud on ffs? Cos for some strange reason we expect all our carrots to be exactly the same length, colour etc loads of smaller producers are squeezed out of business, cos their stock 'aint good enough'. This is of course transferring the land and means of production into fewer and fewer, richer and richer hands - great. It also means that fuck loads of perfectly nice food is thrown away cos its a slightly different shape and again loads of dodgy chemicals are used. And I sure as fuck hope my veg IS grown in dirt!
And of course there are other things like the huge amount fossil fuels and other resources needed to create chemicals, packaging etc etc in order to transport goods all over the place and shit - causing massive ecological damage as well as beign a major factor in our bad health (including mental health/violence etc as studies show industrial chemicals linked to neurological and hormonal develoment etc - particularly passed from mother to baby) - and this is a class issue too, industrial areas are working class areas so who dya think has worse health rates? The incinerator Ive been fighting for the last year is due to be sited next door to a major Safeways distribution centre - on the edge of the airport and M25!
As for workers rights, you're joking aint ya? Cos what Tesco treat their (agency) staff really well dont they? Like them polish warehouse workers on wildcat the other week?
And for taste - well, though this doesnt necessarily work in favour of local shops, my folks recently got an allotment and weve ben growing our own 'funny shaped, dirt covered' vegetables and they are soooooo much nicer! So if local shops source from local, organic producers then in my opinion its usually better. Yeh of course its a matter of personal taste, so its obvious aint it...
... youve got bad taste. 
) when everything is available to the working class Id quite like for these things to still exist - so its shame theyve mostly dissapeared from our orchards cos of supermarkets aint it?
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Already said on-line stores were better than high street for electronics. PC World is the online equivalent of a highstreet electronics retailer, for web-only, amazon. Ebuyer not quite - they've got two warehouses in two different countries iirc.
The difference is you can buy bare-bones kits and components from ebuyer very, very cheaply - about half the price of PC World, if not a third/quarter. This means instead of upgrading your whole PC at once, you can change/add components as need be. This allows far more adaptability to advances in technology. Also, becuase it's about half the price, you can get a computer twice as good for the same money - so it'll be much longer before it's obsolete.
Ebuyer also don't try to sell you 3-year service packages for £250 quid (like Dixons, PC World all do). That £250 will buy the same computer again in 3 years, complete waste of dough - or in some cases would pay for it outright from somewhere like ebuyer. They're scammers.
Yes a pint of milk is a loss-leader. TESCO sells a few basic products at a very low rate of profit (or even a loss) to get people into the store - so they'll think it's common sense that it's cheaper. Once you're in there, you'll find that lots of other things are more expensive than local shops. Veg and fruit is much more, so's plenty of other stuff.