The real question should be about how an AOC positioning flight ended-up launching in such conditions whilst the rest of us had a quick look at Carol the weather girl on BBC Breakfast, rolled over and hit the snooze button on our alarm clocks. The cloud was on/close to the deck, the forecasts were bad, the A109 does not have an icing clearance and it was rather cold.
All the other stuff about frequencies, procedures, controllers, lack of obstruction lights etc is noise and only contributes some rather thin layers of the proverbial Swiss cheese.
Of course, I may be completely wrong.