Clandestino,
To be fair, this may not have been something he was doing for the first time. Reading the AAIB report he decided that the aircraft needed de-icing and he decided on a method by which it could be done. He asked the local engineering contractor to carry out this service, and accepted a thumbs up from them as being that the work had been done, assuming that it included the tail surfaces. He should perhaps have bothered to get out of his seat and open the door and talk to them, or open the window and do the same to get a proper report, but other than that his decision that despite the weather there was no problem with hold over times so anti-iceing wasn't needed seems to be borne out by the fact that there were no deposits on the wings when they got airborne, so if the tail had been de-iced also the event would not have occurred.
I am also a member of the "10,000 hour club", and it doesn't mean you always get things right, that is why you have someone, normally a member of the "less than 10,000 hour club", sitting next to you so you can spot each others mistakes. But in all the times I have sat in the left hand front seat of an aircraft during de-icing, or boarded one which has been de-iced, I have never asked for the loan of a cherry picker or other means to inspect the tail, and no F/O has suggested that I should -I have inspected the parts of the airframe that I can reach or see, and taken the report from the de-icing crew that the job has been done properly to mean that it has.
This appears to be an issue as much for Eastern and their de-icing contractor at ABZ as anything else - if they cannot provide the service required because of a lack of de-icing rigs then the airlines quality department, which presumably also audits contractors, should be discussing with them the need for more equipment and proper training if they wish to keep the contract.